How to give an elephant a bath (Thailand)

For my birthday in 2018, I thought what could be a better way of celebrating than spending the day with a bunch of elephants. So, I took a one hour ride out to Elephant Rescue Park which was an incredible experience.

The elephants

The day starts by sharing information about the different species of elephants around the world. They also share the names of each elephant as well as its history and how it ended up at the park.

The sanctuary rescues circus and logging elephants, and at one point got an injured one that had stepped on sharp metal while hauling logs. The rescue group tried to save her, but she died despite the medical treatment and is buried on the property.

Feeding Elephants

First you get to feed each elephant bunches of bananas, after hearing information about how to feed an elephant without possibly losing an arm. You hold out your banana parallel to the ground by on end as you walk in front of the elephants. The elephant can easily grab the banana with its trunk without grabbing your hand/arm too. And so, the elephant is fed, and you are still able to tie your shoes. Win-win.  The main thing I noticed when doing this is that elephant trunks are very soft on the underside. I hadn’t expected that, and they REALLY like bananas – they eat them like popcorn. The rest of their skin is rough with stiff hairs.

Walking the elephants

After that, we walked with the elephants up a hill and then down to a watering hole.

The elephants are quite lovely and seem happy, although the 2 youngest were trained by the circus to never stand still. Because of this, they sway and swing their trunks back and forth constantly. This reminded me of some animals that pace in a particular way at the zoo. At least when they decide to stop on their own, they won’t be punished like they were previously.

You can see a video of my group with the elephants on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puo-z82dEow

Bathing the elephants

The first watering hole is a pee/poo party as part of getting wet, so the elephants took care of business and then climbed out of the ravine, walked a little further and then sauntered down a ramp to the “real” elephant bath portion of their morning. Here, any of us who wanted could go in the water and scrub them (hard) and get squirted by water from their trunks, and at least in my case, get stepped on by a baby elephant (thankfully she was nearly floating at the time, so in addition to my hands I also still have both feet.

Summary

Overall, I highly recommend going to Elephant Rescue Park or any of the other no-ride, elephant sanctuaries. Your cost of your visit helps provide food for the elephants (they eat 10% of their body weight each day), as well as medical care and enrichment.

And there’s just something hard to describe that you feel when an elephant looks you in the eye from mere inches away.

And now, off to see the lion and tigers. . . .