An Ele-Fun Adventure: Our Chiang Mai Elephant Sanctuary Experience
Today, we visited the Kerchor Elephant Eco Park just outside of Chiang Mai, where we did mahout training to learn how to feed, bathe, and care for elephants that had been rescued from inhumane conditions — working in either the logging or tourist trades here in Thailand.
Chiang Mai is one of the only places in the world that claims to have ethical elephant sanctuaries, where the elephants are well cared for and tourists are allowed to interact with them in their natural habitats and on their terms. After doing some research on the various parks near Chiang Mai, we opted to book a tour to Kerchor via Klook based on its thousands of fantastic reviews, its pricing as compared to some of the other bigger parks, and its reputation as an ethical sanctuary. We had heard that mahout training could be a pretty transformative experience, if done right, and it was important to us to give the kids the opportunity to learn about and spend time with the elephants in a humane and ethical way.
The time we were able to spend with the elephants at Kerchor truly was magical. We got to feed them, follow them on a trek through the jungle, massage them with mud, and splash around with them in a river, up close and personal, all on their time and while following their cues.
That said, while the sanctuary genuinely seemed to take good care of the elephants, the experience did still feel less authentic than we had expected, with the mahouts sometimes seeming more focused on giving the tourists a show — getting the elephants to pose for pictures or spray people on cue — than following their lead, which left us feeling a bit conflicted about the experience as a whole. Overall, our experience at the park was good, although certainly not quite as transformative as the reviews led us to believe.
Our time with the elephants also felt very rushed and too short, given the length of our tour — in the seven hours from when we were picked up to when we were dropped off, we probably spent no more than 90 minutes or so with the elephants.
The rest of the tour just felt like we were filling time: a stop at a rest area added 20 minutes or so to the 1.5 hour drive there; then once we arrived we waited at a staging area for another 20 minutes or so to transfer to a song thaew to take us down to the camp; then we waited another 20 minutes to start the “presentation” where they taught us about the elephants (which was comprised some very basic info on the differences between African and Asian elephants and the introduction of four or five command words to use when speaking to the elephants), and so on. We spent about an hour of the tour travelling up and down the rugged dirt road from the camp to the lunch/tour bus parking area (4 one-way trips in total), another hour “eating lunch” in their staging area/parking lot (though the whole group was finished eating after about 10 minutes), and more time after lunch in another basic presentation (this time about how to make medicine for the elephants).
In all, our trip to Kerchor was memorable, and we left with a greater understanding of and appreciation for their awe-inspiring elephants. And despite some of our misgivings about the performative elements of our encounters with them, the experience did give us an opportunity to have some important discussions with the kids and to encourage them to reflect on what they had seen and heard.
Price for four full-day passes, with transport from Chiang Mai in a large shared van: 115 USD
Notes:
Accessibility and Visiting Kerchor Elephant Eco-Park with Kids
If you’ve got any mobility issues or are taking young children with you, this camp probably isn’t for you — there are precarious bamboo bridges to traverse, slippery muddy hills to climb (it rained), and the river had a very brisk current when we were washing the elephants. Our 5- and 7-year-olds were both okay, but required assistance with the bridges, river, and hills, and got pretty jostled around in the song thaew rides up and down from the camp. We probably wouldn’t recommend Kerchor for kids any younger than ours.
Cancellation Policy
We had initially booked a rafting trip to a nearby waterfall as part of our excursion, but this was (rightly) cancelled due to inclement weather and the river being swollen from heavy rains, and so our trip was cut short and we returned to Chiang Mai a bit earlier than we were supposed to. If you’re booking a trip to Kerchor during the rainy season in Chiang Mai, be aware that this is a very likely possibility, and that the park does not offer refunds for missed activities.