If you are anything like me, then you probably love the thought of being able to spend time with an elephant. The majestic creatures, even from a photo, seem all too wise and beautiful not to see in person at some point in life. That’s why I was beyond excited to travel to Northern Thailand and spend 6 days in the Karen hill tribe village of Ban Naklang in order to achieve this goal. Spending the week at the Kindred Spirit elephant sanctuary has been incredibly informative and eye opening. As per usual, I went there thinking I knew all about the tourism industry and was for some reason shocked when I realized that not only was a lot of my information wrong, but that I actually knew almost nothing about it. The most important thing I learned is that it is essential to ask the right questions when choosing what to do and where to go when you want to visit the elephants while not interfering in a negative way.

The elephant tourist industry has a very bad reputation, and for good reason a lot of the time, but what I also learned is that without the tourist industry, there wouldn’t be a place for most of the elephants in Thailand. This is because most of the forest has been cut for farming or other reasons. Even today, the forest is continually being illegally burned for frivolous reasons like the belief that more delicious and expensive mushrooms will grow and can be harvested if the forest is burned. I also learned that elephants have been owned by families for generations and have caretakers called mahouts. So even before elephant tourism, elephants have been put to work in other ways, like to help fight human wars, or to bring in a wage by working in the logging industry. The logging industry in Thailand was banned in 1989 and the owners of elephants needed other ways of using the elephants to provide income to their families. Hence, elephant tourism.

It seems like a catch-22 doesn’t it? Participate in elephant tourism and contribute to the potentially harmful treatment and long working hours of elephants, or boycott elephant tourism and just hope that the elephant isn’t killed or dies from starvation?

Well as it turns out, there is an alternative option. One in which few upcoming sanctuaries are working toward. One of these sanctuaries is the not-for-profit Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary in Northern Thailand. Kerri McCrea and Sombat, the co-founders of the sanctuary and their co-worker Talia Gale have been working with elephants in Thailand for almost 4 years (Sombat is a mahout and has been working with the elephants for many years) and decided that elephants deserve a better life. Sombat is from Ban Naklang, Kerri is fluent in Pakinyaw, the langauge of the Karen people and long-time elephant owners, and Talia is well on her way to becoming fluent. With their knowledge of the elephant tourist industry and cooperation of the Karen people Kerri and Sombat started to form a plan to provide the elephants with an alternative lifestyle.

When you pay to visit the Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary, you won’t be riding an elephant, but you will be gaining the health and wellness of the elephants that reside there. The day starts off with some background information about the elephant tourism industry, the elephants being taken care of at the sanctuary, and some information about the Karen people. Then you get to explore the small village and meet your home-stay family. When I say home-stay family, what I mean is that some of the money you pay goes to one of the families in the village who puts you up and cooks your meals. Some of the home-stay families might be elephant owners and this is a way to supplement income, or they could be farmers and therefore the money could be used to supplement income for the crop in the hopes of using the land for reforestation.

The following morning you take an hour long hike through the forest with some bananas for the elephants. Then finally you get to meet them, and yes, it’s all it’s cracked up to be.

Instead of seeing exhausted elephants and taking a ride, you see four beautiful elephants who come visit for the bananas and are then free to forage in the forest and corn fields. If they want to hang around then they can, if not, they are free to just be elephants.

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You can watch the elephants do their thing for a couple hours. Some interesting data is collected on elephant behaviour and habits, and then it’s back to the village. At this point, you may be heading back to the city, or if you’ve decided to stay longer you can experience more of the local culture. I was able to take a cooking class, buy some handmade items and have a massage during the week I spent there. The money all going towards the local people who then have to rely less on the elephants for income.

Is it ideal to still have so much human interaction with the elephants? I would say probably not. However, having seen the lifestyle these elephants have, I can honestly say it’s pretty darn good. I don’t know any other sanctuaries who do the same thing because I haven’t done my research to find out, but I do know what questions you can ask if you are interested in visiting an elephant or two and want to know where the best place is go.

One thing I’m told a lot of people are concerned about is elephant chaining. What this means is that at night or for periods during the day, elephants will be chained somewhere so that they do not have room to roam. You can form your own opinion of this, but it turns out it might be the wrong question to ask. The reason for this is because if the elephants are not chained, they can wander in to the wrong fields or potentially ingest harmful chemicals. That is why if someone is telling you they aren’t chaining their elephants, there is a good chance they are lying about it. It is important to consider however the amount of time elephants are chained for. If they are chained for the entire time between visiting hours, then the elephants will have a more difficult time socializing and foraging. So the better question to ask is “How long are the elephants chained for?” Clearly elephants are giant creatures and could do a lot of harm if they become violent or angry. That’s why it is important that elephants be restrained to ensure proper examination during veterinary care. If elephants are not being restrained they may not be attended to properly. So ask, “Are the elephants being restrained during vet care and who is providing treatment?” Because there is a lack of forest in Thailand for the elephants to roam freely, it is important to ask “How much forest is available for the elephants to roam and forage?” If there is no room to forage, how different is it from visiting an elephant in a zoo? “How much time are the elephants free to forage?” Elephants are supposed to forage for about 18 hours a day. Since they sleep for 4-6 hours a day, that doesn’t leave time for much else. That’s why if the elephants are working long days, they won’t have sufficient foraging time. Kerri says that a half day (4-5 hours) is the absolute maximum that an elephant should have to work. “What kind of work is the elephant doing?” If the elephant is providing rides, then how many rides does it have to give in a day? The elephant harness may be causing chafing as well so be wary of that. If the elephant is given too many baths then it can be repetitive and boring for the elephant as well as cause it’s skin to dry out. “How much time do the elephants have to socialize with each other?” Elephants are thought to be extremely intelligent animals and, like humans, require a lot of time to socialize with each other to live a healthy lifestyle. Ok, now for one of the most complicated questions in elephant tourism. “Are the elephants being bought?” There are already too many displaced elephants in Thailand. Unfortunately however baby elephants are smuggled from Myanmar and Laos to the Thai border for purchase. Capturing a baby elephant is a dangerous process. As I said earlier, elephants are social animals and are extremely protective of their young. So when a baby elephant is caught, anywhere between 4-6 elephants are killed in the process that try to protect the baby, and this isn’t a rare occurrence. That’s why it is crucial to understand where the elephants are coming from in the tourism industry.

Asking the right questions obviously won’t ensure that you get an honest answer. It is however a good place to start. With sanctuaries like Kindred Spirit, there is a chance for more elephants in the future to live less stressful and healthier lives. The elephant tourism industry doesn’t have to be all bad. We just have to participate in the right way.