A minivan transports day visitors and volunteers – of which I am one – from the guest houses of Chiang Mai’s ancient walled city to the Elephant Nature Park, almost 60km (37 miles) away, in Mae Taeng district. The anarchic rush-hour traffic doesn’t inspire much optimism, but the anxieties triggered by Thai road etiquette dissipate with each passing kilometre until a river of green supplants the stream of shophouses that have guided our passage north. “We’ll be arriving at the park soon,” senior guide Aeh Likhitwannawut announces once we’ve left the highway, before telling us not what we will be doing, but what we won’t: “ There’ll be no riding, feeding or bathing the elephants .” The road winds its way around a forested hillside before a clearing in the foliage reveals the unmistakable profiles of Asian elephants – some of the park’s 114 – silhouetted against the glow of the sun. My fellow travellers chorus a gasp. After a cup of hill-tribe-farmed coffee, guide Sophon “Home” Nanthawan shows me around. To my surprise, no barriers separate man and beast; only the banyan trees are shielded from harm, by stone circles. “The trees are sacred to Buddhists,” explains Home, before introducing the elephants as if they were old friends. “This one is called Deepor and that’s her buddy Yaiboon. That one over there covering herself in mud is called Pikul,” he says, explaining that elephants plaster themselves in it to keep cool but also to stop insects from biting. Each elephant is kept by a mahout (an elephant caretaker) and we are advised to maintain our distance if an animal seems ruffled. But by and large, the elephants are unperturbed by us humans and we’re able to enjoy an intimate audience with Earth’s second largest land animal, after their African cousins. After walking with the elephants, we explore more of the 100-hectare (247-acre) park, to get acquainted with the other inhabitants: water buffalo, horses, rabbits, cats and dogs that have all been rescued from some form of torment or other, including slaughterhouses, abusive parks, laboratories, wet markets or simply the streets. The sky trail – an elevated pathway overlooking a tea-coloured river – provides a more comprehensive picture of the sylvan Mae Taeng Valley. An intensely organic aroma assails the nostrils. Insects chirp with the consistency of a metronome, and birdsong is interrupted by the occasional trumpet of a distant bull elephant. With few evening distractions, I retire early for the first of my two nights at the park. Volunteers stay for up to two weeks and share a room with one or two others. Before the pandemic, the park could rely on 60 volunteers per week. The number now that coronavirus restrictions have been eased is averaging between 10 and 20 per week. I rise early – to shovel dung. It’s tough going in the rain, but the mood is buoyed by the rapport between the park volunteers – there are eight in my group – and the animals they are tasked with taking care of. Following elephant toilet duties, we shower and head to the kitchen to clean and sort mangoes. The morning shift concludes with the wrapping of sticky rice and bananas for the older elephants. “We have a tonne [1,000kg] of fruit delivered daily,” Home says, while we tuck into a vegan lunch. This is not surprising when one considers an adult elephant weighs between two and four tonnes, and needs to eat 10 per cent of its body weight per day, much of which the animals at the park forage for themselves. Nevertheless, food preparation is a major part of the day-to-day operations, especially as hungry volunteers like me aspire to eat 10 per cent of their body weight, too, when presented with sumptuous tofu and vegetable dishes. The park’s main building, also referred to as Platform One, is an open, two-storey, stilted structure made largely of wood with solar panels on its gently arched roof. It houses a small exhibition of the park’s endeavours, a communal eatery and the kitchen in which volunteers and employees prepare food for the animals. It also has a coffee shop, with a terrace, on which I take a midafternoon break as the tropical sun finally breaks through the clouds. A lumbering female elephant passes a small herd of water buffalo en route to the river, and a petite woman scoots up to me on an e-trike. “I love that one, she always puts leaves on her head,” she says, pointing to the elephant’s frond-coated crown. The woman introduces herself as Saengduean “Lek” Chailert , founder of the Elephant Nature Park, which opened in 2003, and the Save Elephant Foundation (SEF), a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing care and help to Thailand’s elephants. Lek is an ethnic Khmu; her ancestors came to Thailand from the mountains of neighbouring Laos. As a child, she says, she was subject to discrimination as a female member of a hill tribe: “As a woman, you’re expected to make babies and work on the farm. I was the only girl to go to school, and the other kids would stamp on my feet because I had no shoes. “I would tell the pigs my problems and they would lick my tears away. Even though they could not speak, I could really feel their emotion.” When her porcine friends were taken away to be slaughtered, Lek became a vegetarian, an expression of a compassion for animals that would come to define her life (she has since become vegan). After studying art at Chiang Mai Rajabhat University, she worked in the tourism industry, which was growing fast in the 1980s. But the mistreatment of elephants, including the widespread use of chains and bull hooks, convinced her to devote her time to championing animal rights across Southeast Asia. Based on “compassion, understanding and respect” for animals, her nature park offers visitors an intimate and meaningful experience rather than the cheap thrill of riding an elephant or watching animals perform. “Many of the parks claiming to be sanctuaries still use hooks and chains,” says Lek. “It’s just branding.” But it’s the spread of Covid-19 over the past two-and-a-half years that occupies her thoughts most these days, as the disease brought with it a host of unforeseen problems for elephants throughout Thailand. “Many of the parks in places like Phuket or Pattaya don’t own their elephants, they lease them. When it became clear the pandemic was going to last more than a few months, the park owners, who had no tourist revenue , told the owners to come and get their elephants.” Stories of owners walking their animals across Thailand, stopping in urban centres such as Chiang Mai to beg for food and water, abound. “ Many of the elephants died from lack of care, hunger or sickness . “At first, [SEF] simply gave money to the mahouts and food for the elephants. But after three months, when our funds ran low, we decided to start an elephant food bank programme with the help of some American non-profits we work with. “We worked with local farmers [across northern Thailand], asking them to plant pumpkins and bananas with the condition they didn’t spray pesticides. We bought from them and invited elephant camps in need to request food.” A foster care project was developed – individuals may sponsor an elephant for six months for US$56 – to support those animals “in desperate need” and to date, Lek and her team have been able to support 260 camps and an estimated 2,000 elephants through the coronavirus crisis. A lot of imagination has gone into devising new revenue streams. “We’ve also made some money from our cakes,” Lek says of an initiative whereby supporters can purchase a personalised jumbo cake made of locally sourced ingredients and watch a video online as it is fed to the elephants. Yet economic strains have grown manifest in animal welfare issues. “During the height of the pandemic, an owner brought three elephants here and asked us to help, he had nowhere else to take them,” she says. “The other day, someone dropped 15 puppies at my gate. We’re totally full now. I dream of buying more land, to watch my animals roam more freely, but that will take a lot more money.” Standing by the river, Lek broadcasts an impressively loud holler for someone less than five feet (152cm) in height. Elephants arrive one by one until there are five feeding on the lychees she is dishing out. The fruit is in season and grows all around the valley. It’s clear Lek has developed a special bond with her charges, kissing their trunks, singing lullabies and even communicating in some non-verbal way. It’s easy to forget that this tiny, mud-spattered woman holds a position on the Thai parliament’s committee for wild elephant protection. Walking back to Platform One, Lek appears revived, an almost maternal glow emanating from her cheeks. “You know, some scientists once got in touch with us and said they wanted to try and bring mammoths back to life,” she says. “Can you believe that? I said what about trying to protect the animals we already have?” She pauses for a moment, then adds, “Sometimes I really don’t understand humans.”