Yuliya and I had our Mahout training day at Baan Chang Elephant Park. Baan Chang Elephant Park rescues elephants from performances, logging work, and other tourist companies. In these cases the elephants are often abused and mistreated. In addition, the seat put on the elephant to ride them hurts them, so Baan Chang does not use them.
Baan Chang is home to about 40 rescued Asian Elephants. It's located about an hour north of Chiang Mai. After a long drive (having to pick up the rest of our tour participants added about 45 minutes), we arrived at the park. They had us change into the blue mahout clothes. You get elephant slobber on you fairly quickly, so I was glad not to be wearing my own clothes. They provides us with lockers and lots of breaks. Luckily I had read that it was safe to bring your DSLR with you. You can even keep your camera while riding the elephant if you wish, although a DSLR might be a little bulky.
We started with our guide telling us a little about the elephants and how to feed them their morning snack of bananas and sugar cane.
At this time they have the elephants chained for your safety, and so they aren't fighting with each other. We were allowed to walk around and feed any elephant we liked.
The elephants stick out their trunks at you to get the food. They make sort of a suctioning sound if you don't hand them food.
After feeding the elephants we did our rider training. The elephant kneels down and you step on its leg and then hold onto the ears and jump on its neck. As soon as you are on its neck, it's trained to stand up. To make it go, you yell "Pai Pai Pai" and kick behind its ears. To turn left or right you yell "Kway kway kway" and kick with the opposite leg. To get the elephant to lay down, you yell "On long" until it lays down. To tell you elephants its being good, you tell it "Dee Dee Dee" and pat it. We had to take our elephants around a tree and turn and then get it to lay down so we could jump off.
Here I am on the course:
We then took a lunch break and enjoyed the bamboo hammocks and view of the elephants:
After lunch we took a 90 minute trail ride around the property. Our elephant was named Tong Sing and was actually the same one we trained on. Her trainer must have liked us or thought we were really good elephant riders because he picked us to ride her.
The elephants are pretty similar to trail horses in that they will follow each other for the most part, and try to eat things on the way. Our elephant kept picking up huge branches to munch on. The front rider (in this case me) sort of balances by leaning their arms on the top of the elephant's head. It does take some getting use to, and even small shifts in balance makes it feel like you might fall off! Luckily all of us stayed on. Here are some photos from the trail ride:
After the trail ride, we washed our elephants in the watering hole. Ours seemed pretty happy dunking her head under water. It seems like they can hold their breath pretty long.
After washing Tong Sing we were pretty soaked, but Baan Chang provides showers. Tomorrow - last morning in Chiang Mai.
Baan Chang is home to about 40 rescued Asian Elephants. It's located about an hour north of Chiang Mai. After a long drive (having to pick up the rest of our tour participants added about 45 minutes), we arrived at the park. They had us change into the blue mahout clothes. You get elephant slobber on you fairly quickly, so I was glad not to be wearing my own clothes. They provides us with lockers and lots of breaks. Luckily I had read that it was safe to bring your DSLR with you. You can even keep your camera while riding the elephant if you wish, although a DSLR might be a little bulky.
We started with our guide telling us a little about the elephants and how to feed them their morning snack of bananas and sugar cane.
At this time they have the elephants chained for your safety, and so they aren't fighting with each other. We were allowed to walk around and feed any elephant we liked.
The elephants stick out their trunks at you to get the food. They make sort of a suctioning sound if you don't hand them food.
After feeding the elephants we did our rider training. The elephant kneels down and you step on its leg and then hold onto the ears and jump on its neck. As soon as you are on its neck, it's trained to stand up. To make it go, you yell "Pai Pai Pai" and kick behind its ears. To turn left or right you yell "Kway kway kway" and kick with the opposite leg. To get the elephant to lay down, you yell "On long" until it lays down. To tell you elephants its being good, you tell it "Dee Dee Dee" and pat it. We had to take our elephants around a tree and turn and then get it to lay down so we could jump off.
Here I am on the course:
We then took a lunch break and enjoyed the bamboo hammocks and view of the elephants:
After lunch we took a 90 minute trail ride around the property. Our elephant was named Tong Sing and was actually the same one we trained on. Her trainer must have liked us or thought we were really good elephant riders because he picked us to ride her.
The elephants are pretty similar to trail horses in that they will follow each other for the most part, and try to eat things on the way. Our elephant kept picking up huge branches to munch on. The front rider (in this case me) sort of balances by leaning their arms on the top of the elephant's head. It does take some getting use to, and even small shifts in balance makes it feel like you might fall off! Luckily all of us stayed on. Here are some photos from the trail ride:
After washing Tong Sing we were pretty soaked, but Baan Chang provides showers. Tomorrow - last morning in Chiang Mai.
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