elephants

I always have a slight trepidation about going on organised group tours. The early start, the bus journey, the fear of puking, the worry that my companions for the day will be a mixture of civilisation's worst creations - that sort of thing. However, there is little point coming to Chiang Mai if you are not going to go on some kind of expedition into the surrounding forests and jungles.

A mini bus picked me up from my hotel at around 8.15am, and I felt surprisingly awake and refreshed after the last few days. We then set off to our destination 78km north of the city - the Elephant Nature Park. This is an award winning sanctuary that primarily looks after elephants who have been abused or neglected by their owners, and I had heard rave reviews about it.

The treatment of elephants in Thailand is worthy of an entire website in its own right, but I will try briefly to provide some background. The elephant is Thailand's national symbol - you see it everywhere you look. Statues of them ornate temples, pictures of them adorn beer bottles, models of them are on display outside shops. In many respects the elephant helped create the Thailand we know today.

Despite all of this, elephants are treated appallingly badly and some even fear for their future in this country if things carry on the way they are. In 1989 the Thai government banned logging - the cutting down of trees, essentially. It was the elephants who moved the wood from Thailand's dense forests, and so when this practice was outlawed there was no use for them. They were not used to surviving in the wild, and in the modern day Thailand with a growing population needing land to farm, this was not practical either. So thousands of them ended up being killed, neglected or sold to Burma where logging is still allowed. What is also interesting is that by the time logging was banned in Thailand the country had lost two thirds of its trees, but this decision was taken primarily because the government realised losing so many trees increased the risk of flooding in the monsoon season. The wanton environmental crime of destroying forests obviously wasn't a principal concern.

There are only a couple of thousand elephants alive in Thailand today - down from 100,000 a century ago. Their only use to many Thais is the fascination of western tourists with these remarkable animals. So elephants are routinely paraded around the streets of Bangkok - a dreadfully traumatic thing for many of them - so that their owners can collect money from gullible tourists with their trunks. Or they are used for rides and shows. None of this is is perfect, but it is actually preferable to the alternative. Thai law offers little or no protection to elephants. Killing one carries the same punishment as killing a donkey - a small fine that is rarely enforced. Many Thais today see their national symbol as nothing more than a pest.

Today I was heading into beautifully green and lush forests north of Chiang Mai to see the alternative. The eco sanctuary is a haven for more than 20 elephants who have been rescued from abusive situations. It relies upon the goodwill of tourists to survive - looking after animals that eat non-stop for 18 hours a day and each require their own helper is not a cheap businesses. Visitors are made up of day trippers like myself, people who stay in huts for a few days and volunteers who typically work here for around a week. All of us will today help feed and clean the elephants.

Our first task is to clean the food. The elephants are vegetarians, and so we have to clean tubs full of fresh food and vegetables for them to eat. After this is done - the volunteers did most of the work - we then took it in turns to feed them. You do this by placing a handful of fruit or veg into the elephant's trunk, who then uses it to lower the food into its mouth. It is a straightforward and satisfying experience.

After a general meander round the park with our guide who told us some of the elephant's harrowing life stories, we were treated to a huge buffet Thai lunch. Over plates of lovely food and cold beer, I got chatting to one of the people from my mini bus - an English guy called Richard. He was of a similar age, lived near me in London, was on holiday for the same reasons - loved Thailand, wanted to take advantage of all the bank holidays and avoid being in the UK for the Royal Wedding. We got on really well, and it was a bonus to have a like minded companion for the day.

The fun bit of the tour was in the afternoon - bathing the elephants. By bathing I don't mean wiping them down with wet cloths - it involves going into the river and chucking buckets of water over the side of them. We had to get changed to do this, but before we were allowed to our guide insisted on laying down some ground rules. Women were not allowed to wear bikinis and men were not allowed to be naked. Streaking through an elephant sanctuary had always been a personal ambition of mine, so it was very sad to have it so cruelly thwarted. Mind you, the guide said nothing about prohibiting women from being naked and men wearing bikinis, so there was room for creative interpretation of her rules.

Anyway, sloshing around in the river in such gorgeous surroundings throwing water over these immense creatures was outrageous fun. It also helps to know that you are actually doing a tiny, tiny bit towards something really important. The owner of the sanctuary wants it to be a model for how elephants can be treated with love and affection, and still be a major tourist attraction. It's up to the visitors to Thailand as much as anyone else to help bring this about.

At around 5pm we headed back to Chiang Mai. When we got there, Richard and I headed to a lovely restaurant by the river where we gorged on Northern Thai food and relaxed with G&Ts in the early evening sun. A truly unforgettable day.