CARAVANS of elephants and mahouts have embarked on a long journey through the hills and forests of northern Thailand.
They have embarked on a journey of uncertainty as unemployment has hit them hard due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with dozens of elephant camps that attracted tourists all-year-round now closed.
They will have to walk for days before reaching their native villages in remote areas along the Thai-Myanmar border inhabited by the Karen – an ethnic group with a centuries-old tradition of keeping and taming elephants, reports Channel News Asia.
"Tourists disappeared when the Covid-19 outbreak started. Everything shut down.
"Everybody was shocked but not as much as the elephants' owners," said Sangdeaun 'Lek' Chailert, president of the Save Elephant Foundation.
Located in Chiang Mai, the non-profit organisation provides care and assistance to captive elephants in Thailand through local community outreach, rescue and rehabilitation programmes.
Since the pandemic began, the foundation has helped more than 1,500 elephants nationwide with food.
Without tourists, the animals risk starvation as their owners have no income and struggle to cope with the expenses.
"The mahouts have to feed their elephants 300kg of food per day," Lek said.
It is estimated that there are about 4,400 captive elephants in Thailand. Before the pandemic, more than half of them were working in the tourism industry.
Lek said more than 100 jobless elephants in Chiang Mai alone have walked home, some as young as two months.
Earlier in May, she joined one of the caravans in a five-day trek from elephant camps in Mae Wang district in Chiang Mai to a Karen village in Mae Chaem district.
They walked more than 100km, crisscrossing the jungle and climbing steep hills. Part of their journey involved navigating burnt forests.
Caravans with baby elephants would have to make more stops for the calves to rest and drink milk from their mothers.
"They ate food along the way but they were tired as well, especially the old ones and the little babies," she said.
Captive elephants in Thailand were used to drag timber through thick jungle until 1989, when the government banned logging.
Since then, the animals have become a tourist attraction. Visitors to Thailand often associate them with riding, trekking and circus-like performances as their owners sought new ways to earn money from their animals.
Over the past 30 years, a number of elephant camps have opened across Thailand. Many of them are located in Chiang Mai, a tourism hub in the northern region.
Lek expects the situation to worsen next month.
"If anyone says the crisis period is March, April and May, it's not so for elephant owners. The real crisis will hit next month when their savings run out.
"An elephant usually costs about US$31,200 (RM136,000) or so but currently, some of them can be bought at just US$9,300 (RM40,500). The mahouts can't bear the expenses anymore," she said.
To help the animals, the Save Elephant Foundation has launched a project to help mahouts grow food. It has called on landowners in various provinces across Thailand to lease empty plots of land to elephant owners at a cheap price.
At the same time, it is also working with ethnic Karen communities in northern Thailand to rebuild their natural environment, transforming deforested areas into sustainable farms and paving the way for ecotourism operations.
"Many elephants have returned home after decades in tourism. So I'm trying to ask the mahouts to join a conservation project called Bring Elephants and Their Mahouts Home," Lek said.
Meanwhile, in a remote Karen village in Mae Chaem, the elephants and their mahouts received a warm welcome.
The villagers had prepared various kinds of fruits for the animals and sang local songs to mark the special occasion. Some old people wept when they saw the elephants they know return from work at tourist camps for the first time in decades.
"They told me they share some memories together and they were so happy to see the elephants in the village again. They never thought the animals would ever get to come home," Lek said.