Thai Elephant Home

The purpose of our trip to Thailand was to volunteer with the Elephants at the Thai Elephant Home. This experience ended up being so much more than I ever imagined. The Thai Elephant Home rescues elephants from unhealthy working conditions, provides them with a happy life where they are ridden bareback for a more friendly experience. If you go to Thailand and want to ride an elephant, please do not support the places where they put you into a wooden basket style saddle to ride. The basket isn't good for the elephant's spine and the riding experience isn't authentic.

The Thai Elephant Home is truly a home for elephants, it's in a lovely jungle setting. They preserve and maintain the lifestyle of the local community and the mahouts, and they operate in a sustainable way. Check out www.thaielephanthome.com to learn more about this program. We participated in their volunteer program where we had an elephant assigned to each of us and a mahout. We worked daily with the elephants and the mahouts, cleaning the elephant area, feeding and bathing the elephants, and riding the elephants. In addition we built three dams on the hillside behind the camp to prevent erosion.

In a short time we became adept at knowing the elephant commands and enough Thai to speak with the mahouts! Please checkout my FaceBook page for many more photos and posts from our time at the Thai Elephant Home.