Elephants on their walk with us during a visit to one of Elephant Nature Park’s satellite sites. As far as I could tell, this company is the most reputable in Thailand, offering non-riding experiences, good care, and they only have elephants that have been retired or rescued from logging work in neighboring countries.

However, I still had conflicting thoughts about visiting. The Asian Elephant is an endangered species and while it’s great that these elephants are able to live out their lives in a relatively peaceful fashion, they are still captive and will never be rehabilitated. They are also allowed to breed, which brings more elephants into this closed system.