Our Half-Day Elephant Care Adventure provides an ultimate experience with our rescued elephants, enjoying an educational, fun, and active immersion into the elephants’ daily lives.
We focus on providing love and care to our rescued elephants in a sustainable manner that eliminates stress while providing a real connection and experience to our visitors. This is all complimented by an amazing Thai cooking session and lunch!
With an optional air-conditioned van transfer from your hotel, visitors arrive at the Phuket Nature Elephant Reserve and our lush jungle entrance. Inside you will find our Observation Deck Ban Chang Restaurant Phuket, where you will be welcomed to our elephant sanctuary and meet your guide.
We commence the Half-Day Elephant Care Adventure by briefing you on the program, what to expect and safety rules around the elephants. Lockers are available for any valuables, and we provide mosquito spray to ensure your protection and comfort throughout the program. Raincoats and umbrellas are also available in the case of rain.
The first activity is to prepare the elephants’ food, which typically consists of bananas, sugarcane, watermelon, cucumber, and other yummy elephant treats. Did you know that elephants can eat up to 10% of their body weight daily? Elephants have a massive appetite and require a LOT of elephant food!
Next, we need to prepare the nutritious herbal and vitamin balls for the elephants’ daily diet which consists of pumpkin, sticky rice, tamarind, bananas, and vitamins. These are particularly important for any elephant with teeth issues that are unable to eat harder foods and help ensure the elephants balanced diet.
While the herbal and vitamin balls are being further prepared, guests visit our special Elephant Dung Recycling Center with hands-on learning on how to make beautiful colourful recycled paper from elephant dung. This is particularly popular for the kids! We also have a paper craft activity teaching you how to make a beautiful paper flower from the recycled elephant dung paper which guests can keep to take home.
Next up is one of the biggest highlights of the program, the Elephant Jungle Nature Hike, where you get to walk side-by-side with our huge rescued elephants through our lush jungle trails. We provide longer 30-minute and shorter 10-minute options depending on your fitness level. A truly amazing experience with our beautiful elephants in their natural and lush jungle surroundings!
After all that exercise, it’s time for the elephants to cool down in our unique Hydrotherapy Pool, where they are able to swim, splash around, and enjoy some more yummy elephant food treats from our visitors!
The Sand & Mud Spas enable the elephants to protect their sensitive skin against the sun and insects by covering themselves with mud and sand. Watching the elephants rolling around loving life in their surroundings is another highlight of our program.
Our Elephant Shower Platform is where visitors can help wash and clean the elephants after all their fun in the mud. Elephants also drink a lot of water and you can help give them a drink. Just be sure not to get wet with the elephants!
After all the fun, learning, and elephant care activities, visitors move back to our Observation Deck Ban Chang Restaurant Phuket and get ready for a delicious Thai lunch including a cooking demonstration teaching you how to make the famous Pad Thai and Tom Yum dishes!
For those joining our afternoon elephant care adventure program, we commence your program with lunch first followed by the elephant activities.
After lunch, visitors help feed the elephants one last time before collecting their complementary stainless steel water bottles and transferring back to their hotels.