Who asked for a deeply unsettling emotional experience? I just wanted to see elephants.

I know that everyone’s calling themselves an “ethical” elephant sanctuary these days, but I also know that the devil is in the details. If they let you interact directly with the elephants in any way, that’s entertainment. No feeding, no bathing, certainly no riding. A truly ethical sanctuary respects the elephants’ agency and autonomy, and doesn’t force them into interactions.

I did my homework, first on what constitutes ethical treatment in the first place, and second on how well the options near me hewed to those standards. One stood out in particular: Following Giants, whose tag line is “Letting elephants lead the way.” I signed up for their half-day tour, which included pickup and delivery at my hotel. I was looking forward to an awesome day of close, but not too close, contact with these magnificent beasts, who had all been rescued from their lives of toil to a well-deserved retirement on 85 acres optimized for their material and emotional needs.

I was not expecting to have my heart broken.

It turns out that there’s a lot more behind “rescued from their lives of toil” than I’d accounted for. Every one of these poor animals had a tragic, Dickensian backstory, although they all seemed to be variations on a particularly gruesome theme. It starts with some sort of backbreaking physical labor, mostly logging or hauling, both of which cause unnatural stress on their legs and backs.

When they can no longer work due to injury they have two paths: chained up without food and left to die, as it no longer makes economic sense to feed them; or, if they are healthy enough, converted to entertainment, offered the opportunity to enjoy direct interactions with humans.

That might sound like an improvement over the elephant chain gang, and I suppose it is. But I’m not sure it makes much difference to the elephants. They don’t like interacting with humans. How much don’t they like it? Following Giants had a helpful placard describing the training regimen required to get an elephant to accept human interaction. It’s called The Crush.

They separate young calves from their mothers, keep them in isolation, deprive them of food and water, and beat them until they are broken and can be controlled by fear. That fear is the only reason they tolerate close contact interactions. One assumes that the older elephants who convert to entertainment have gone through a similar process. It’s not like they lined up to volunteer to drag logs through the jungle.

Also, elephant vertebrae point upward. Instead of round, smooth disks, elephants have sharp, bony protrusions extending upwards from their spine. It’s obviously worse with a howdah, but even with a blanket, imagine what riding an elephant does to their spines. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Deformities and a lifetime of pain. That’s what elephants get in exchange for letting humans ride them. No wonder they don’t like us.

If you ever have an opportunity to visit an elephant camp, here are things to keep in mind. If you are riding an elephant, you are causing it physical and emotional harm. If you are interacting with it directly in any way, feeding it, bathing it, petting it, you are engaged in a painful, non-consensual interaction. Elephants who interact with humans do so because they’re forced. They will never choose to have anything to do with you.

As we walked the grounds it was emphasized over and over how smart and emotionally perceptive the elephants are. We were cautioned to not say negative things, as they can pick up on tone, to mind our body language, as they would pick up aggressive cues from us. They said they were careful never to use the names they’d had before coming to the sanctuary, as hearing their slave names triggered them. You’re basically looking at 10,000 pounds of PTSD that has had enough of your shit.

They have physical problems and emotional problems. Some of them are afraid of everything, some act out aggressively, some seek solitude, some need companionship. At least one of them is bisexual and another is a committed lesbian. They’re like fucking people. So it’s hard to hear about their histories, to realize the horrific abuse they’ve endured. I had trouble simply appreciating them for the majestic creatures they are.

One fell down a hill carrying furniture and broke a hip. One, carrying a rider after injuries from logging, had had enough. She grabbed the rider with her trunk and threw him off her back, killing him. One is afraid of loud noises after working as a parade elephant, and runs in fear when she hears loud cars. Several are blind, among their other injuries, from having been whipped in the eye by their mahouts.

When people talk about how travel is broadening, sometimes I think that’s true only in the sense that I am constantly learning new reasons to hate people, discovering new depths of depravity that humanity can plumb. The whole experience was kind of like touring historic plantations in the South. If they’d been turned into retirement communities for freed slaves.

Following Giants is an old business, the current owner being the sixth generation of his family to run the elephant camp. In the beginning it was like any other, using the animals for labor. In more recent times, the camp was in the entertainment business. The current owner, Ray, started to offer educational programs on mahout culture and elephant behavior, but he couldn’t transition fully to that model, as rides were the only thing people would reliably pay for to keep the camp open.

He met with World Animal Protection in 2017, and they’ve partnered together to move Following Giants to a fully elephant-friendly business model. The current camp in Krabi houses fourteen elephants, with another eleven at their camp on the island of Koh Lanta.

But I hear you. Elephants are cool. Can’t we just enjoy the elephants without the sermonizing? Are you even capable of unalloyed pleasure?

Yes, we can. And no, apparantly, I’m not.

Line up everyone who knows me and poll them for the Top Ten Things About Mark. Feels Deeply would be on exactly no one’s list, my own included. This isn’t fun for me, either. If I’d wanted feelings I’d have been having them all along.

So, elephants all around, barkeep.

It started with orientation and booting up. We were told to bring socks, but the only socks I have are no shows. So now I have blisters on my ankles from a half day trekking in rubber boots.

The first elephants we met were Pumpkin and her eight-month old daughter, Carrot, who is still nursing. They’re in a wooden-fenced pen until Carrot is ready to deal with the rest of the herd.

Elephants at many camps, by the way, are kept in enclosures with electric fences, but those have a habit of frying other critters. Following Giants uses wooden fences, which the elephants could easily knock down. All of the elephants are penned at night, to keep them from wandering off. Providing enough food and water in the enclosures keeps them from being motivated to bust loose.

Here’s some adorable baby elephant trunk action, courtesy of Carrot.

We were introduced, from a safe distance, to the elephant who had killed her rider. We were encouraged to look into her eyes (no thank you) and keep a safe distance (a completely unnecessary admonition).

Here’s some typical elephant hijinks. In this clip, the banging of the leaves shakes off insects and dirt, making the treat ready to eat. Plus, a pair of cute younger elephants. One is the adult’s daughter, and the other is an orphan she’s taken in.

This elephant is spraying itself with red dirt, which acts as a natural sunscreen and keeps them from getting burnt. The second half of this clip is just about how very close we were able to get to the elephants. They were fine with being near us, so long as we didn’t try to force some interaction.

A few more examples of how very close we were able to get to them. It felt like a walking safari. The absence of predatory carnivores was a nice touch.

Here’s the lesbian and the bisexual (I apologize for not representing them properly, but I don’t know which is which) enjoying a spa day together.

At the end we wound up at a little open air lodge for lunch. It had an excellent overlook of the grounds.

While we were waiting for the buffet to be delivered, we were brought this.

Lunch was even better than anticipated, since it wasn’t a mud loaf. Nothing like grading on a curve. “How was lunch?” “Great. Not mud!”

While we were dining, one of the young’uns did her best to get around her mahout and into whatever we were doing. Which apparently looked fascinating. Here’s the little scamp.

Her mahout did his best to distract her with water games, and she did her best to get around him. If we’d wondered whether elephants were as smart as claimed, here was our answer.

And then the short hike back to the beginning to deposit boots and inspect blisters.

It was good. I’m glad I did it. Elephants are objectively amazing. Sometimes I wish I could just have an enjoyable experience without the shadow of one form of colonialism or another tainting it. But I’m not actually convinced that it’s some failure on my part.

I suppose what I’d really like is for there to be spaces that haven’t been tainted by one form of colonialism or another. I thought maybe Thailand, as one of a handful of nations that have never been actually colonized, might offer that experience, but I’d forgotten how low we’re willing to sink to impose our will on others, however many legs they might have.