Yoga and elephants – maybe they don’t mix
I had hopes of bringing you all quite the excellent yoga-elephant adventure.
Yogi water bottle in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Instead, I had conflicted feelings the entire time.
In the pile of fliers I picked up around town, I saw the YogiMahout. A mahout is a man who trains elephants. The brochure showed people doing yoga poses on the backs of the elephants. It talked about uniting with your elephant and developing a relationship.
The only yoga-related part of the day was the water bottles they gave us happened to have the poses for the sun salutation on it.
At our first stop, we picked up bananas and sugar cane to feed some elephants. But the elephants had a chain around one leg to prevent them from tearing down houses, the guide said.
I thought the point of this was to show how smart and domesticated elephants were.
Then we arrived at the camp where this company rents the elephants and a 4-year-old elephant and a 16-months-pregnant elephants stood there with a chain on one leg waiting for us to feed them.
Elephants eat 300 kilos of food a day. There’s no way they can get enough food waiting for our bananas. And they’re used to eating and walking all day long. I watched them for hours in India. Just wandering and eating and eating and eating.
Elephant with one leg chained in Chiang Mai, Thailand By Sonja Bjelland
The guide said the elephants are rotated into the jungle for 3 days a week and then in the camp. I just kept hoping they were treated well.
I wanted to believe these were elephants that had been used in the logging industry and were now living a better life hauling tourists instead but the guide didn’t speak enough English to understand that question.
And I think it’s a tough balance. Animals and humans can become very close. As a species we have ridden elephants and horses for centuries if not more. But it’s how you build that relationship I suppose.
It was incredible to be so close to the elephants. Especially after having such a terrifying experience with them in India.
I didn’t realize their hair was so course and what that would feel like on my legs. Or how high I would be sitting when riding one. And that’s probably something yoga has helped with.
A little elephant sprays itself with dust in Chiang Mai, Thailand By Sonja Bjelland
It’s a precarious balance to sit on an elephant that far off the ground.
I just kept petting my elephant. We got along really well. Probably because I didn’t care how many banana trees it ate. I thought it was incredible to watch as it just yanked a whole tree out of the ground with its trunk and then chowed down.
We got to the end of the ride and the elephants got to take a dip in this river. The trainer for my elephant came over and put a chain around its leg but it wasn’t attached to anything. I tried to ask why but he didn’t speak much English.
I gave my elephant a hug and hoped for the best.
