My friends rode an elephant and said it was an amazing experience – what’s so terrible about it?

It may be your dream to ride an elephant, but it is an elephant’s worst nightmare to be ridden. Here’s what goes into making an elephant “rideable”:

1. First, an elephant calf is captured from the wild, tearing it away from its mother and herd – as well as from any chance it has of a free, wild life. This is illegal and can be termed as “poaching.”
2. The calf is restrained in a small squeeze contraption called a kraal and starved and beaten for months. This brutal “breaking-in process” called katti azhikal or phajaan, is intended to destroy the calf’s natural, wilful spirit and to instil so much fear in the young calf that it will allow humans to ride it for fear of suffering the same pain again.
3. The elephant then spends the rest of its life living in constant fear- beaten frequently and regularly to reinforce the “training”. Furthermore, the elephant then is kept in isolation for all its life with no or little interaction with other elephants. This is psychologically detrimental for the elephant, causing it to become withdrawn and unhappy, and in turn engaging in stereotypic behaviour.
4. Once in captivity, these elephants are often neglected and poorly cared for. They receive little or no veterinary care; their nutrition is compromised and they have restricted access to water. These captive elephants are housed on concrete floors, where they are chained for extended periods of time, often standing in their own dung and urine. This leads to foot rot and many diseases.
5. The very act of riding is cruel – an elephant’s back was not designed to carry weight and yet the weight of the carrier, the mahout/keeper and the tourists on its back can put an intense amount of pressure on the animal’s spine. These weights can often exceed 200-400 kilograms of the ‘howdah’ and in addition to it the weight of the mahout and three adult passengers easily exceeds 600 kilograms—causing sores bruises, cuts and deformities in the animal’s back, but most importantly it leads to early arthritis and severe joint pains.

Illegality persists in the elephant riding industry despite strict laws, with owners unashamedly flouting rules and lacking requisite ownership paperwork – taking advantage of the difficulty of enforcement to break all welfare and conservation laws.