No! Elephants do not belong in captivity – they belong in the wild and are wild animals. In order for tourists to be able to sit on their backs and ride them, they have to be poached from the wild, separated from their families and then beaten and abused in order to make them “ride-able for tourists. The heavy metal and wood contraption which is perched on their backs for your comfort called ‘howdah’ weighs a lot and combined with the weight of the tourists, becomes very heavy and damages their spine irreversibly.