One of my favorite tasks I did while in Thailand was walking elephants. Only certain elephants got to have walks periodically throughout the day. I was lucky enough to walk 2 of those elephants in one day! We would prepare for our walks by chopping up a variety of fruits such as pineapple, watermelon, and bananas. We will carry 2 buckets of this fruit to keep the elephant interested in joining us on this walk. The sanctuary doesn’t use any sort of leash on these beautiful creatures so we use the fruit almost as an invisible leash so the elephant doesn’t decide to take a different route as us.

The length of the walk mainly depended on the mahout and his elephant. If the elephant wasn’t interested in walking at all, though, she was free to run back to her enclosure and she would be offered another walk later that day. The choice to go on a walk was 100% up to the elephant. The route of the walk on the other hand, was up to the mahout working with the elephant. The elephants and the mahouts seem to have a sacred bond that couldn’t be broken. The elephant would go anywhere the mahout would go, no questions asked. My fruit and I were simply just on the walk to keep the elephant entertained. Although with some elephants if you weren’t distributing the fruit fast enough you could be knocked over by her powerful, greedy shove. The fruit also aided us with how fast or slow we wanted to take this walk. The elephant would walk however fast the fruit was going.

Although the elephant weighed 10 times more than I do, she seemed to be more timid around me because I was so much smaller than her. She was very careful to not step too close to me in fear that she would step on my toes. But when it came to the fruit she did not show mercy when the fruit started to run low. If I took too long to give her her beloved pineapple, she would let me know. She would gently shove me or just stick her nosy trunk in my bucket and steal some fruit for herself.

When the walk came to an end, the elephants always knew it because they would trot eagerly to their enclosure knowing that it was bath time! We threw all the leftover fruit in their water bowl and began scrubbing their leathery skin with a brush and hosing them off at the same time. We got them to be squeaky clean only for the elephants to blow dirt on themselves 5 seconds later. It was still a fun experience!