Working With Giants - Elephant Research in Northern Thailand

Sienna Homsher

Dec 10, 2025

11 min read

Updated: Dec 17, 2025

After leaving Nepal I spent two weeks with my parents traveling around Thailand. During this time we visited the city of Chiang Mai, rode scooters around the countryside of Chiang Dao, and explored the Southern island of Koh Lanta (with a lot of rain). When we left the island my parents headed back to the states and I flew back up North for my next adventure. After leaving the bustling city of Chiang Mai I arrived in the hills of Huay Pakkoot village, a Karen/Pakinyaw community that is over 500 years old and located in the Mae Chaem district of Northern Thailand. This is my home for two weeks where I will hike with elephants, survey wild gibbons, and work with the local children.

Here we are working with Asian forest elephants. Asian elephants are distinctly different from the more commonly known African elephants, with specific biological differences including smaller size and noticeably small ears. They are endangered, facing threats from habitat loss, and in Thailand the number of captive elephants is higher than those in the wild. The elephants we worked with in Huay Pakkoot are semi-wild elephants who live in the forests but are looked after by mahouts (traditional elephant caretakers). Each elephant is owned by a family and bonded with a specific mahout who will look after the elephant, typically for its entire life. What we do is accompany the mahouts on elephant hikes where we take welfare, activity, and behavioral data on the elephants. Most of these elephants have been in camps for a significant period of their lives. This often happens because the villagers need to make more money to survive as the prices for corn and rice have plummeted per kilo so they will send their family elephant to work in a tourist camp. Now, we are trying to bring these elephants back to the forests and create opportunities for the village while keeping the elephants in as natural habitats as possible. All elephants brought back to the village need to have a mahout who is with them throughout the whole day to supervise them and they are tied up in the forest at night. This is necessary to prevent human/elephant conflict, particularly through agriculture as an elephant could easily eat an entire rice field in a day, destroying an entire year of income for a family and to protect the elephants from dangers like highways. During the day when they are with their mahouts they are completely untethered and the mahouts just follow where they want to go, only moving them when they are in places they shouldn’t be or to bring them to new areas of the forest to eat.

(This blog post contains many photos. To continue reading scroll past the photos in each section. To view the photo caption with more information, click on the photo or hover over the image)

Big Boy Pu Noy

On my first day on the project I went on a hike with the elephant Pu Noy. Pu Noy is 16 years old and truly enormous, nearly as large as an African elephant. When we crested the hill to reach him and saw him standing below us I was blown away. He was stunning, with long tusks and a tall arching back. For the majority of the morning he didn’t move much, preferring to eat his way through the area thoroughly before moving on. I loved watching him prepare food, when he grabbed bunches of grass with his trunk and hit them against the ground or his body to remove any dirt or pieces he didn't want before eating. Sometimes he would prepare a bunch but immediately spit it out when he put it in his mouth. He would repeat that until he found a satisfactory bite. After clearing out the first area of anything good to eat he took us on a steep scrabble up the hill through dense vegetation, fallen trees, and slippery mud. He maneuvered the terrain with no problem, using the front of his feet to dig steps into the hill face. We struggled along behind him, stepping in his footprints wherever we could. When we reached the top of the hill his mahout led him through a cornfield, not an easy task with an elephant who really wants to eat corn, so he could get a drink of water from the well. When he passed us on his way out of the field his enormous size was made even more clear. We stepped out of the path and ducked into the corn and as he passed his tall back blocked out the sun and cast a shadow over our group. His footsteps were silent but you could imagine them rocking the earth with the power and weight in them. He reached out his truck to snag any corn he could and despite the best efforts of his mahout, he walked away with a few trunkfulls. We followed him back to the forest where we spent the remainder of the time watching him itch himself on various trees and inevitably knock down all of said trees with his massive head or butt. The entire time he kept an eye on the corn field and made multiple attempts to sneak back without his mahout seeing but each time was told off. The testament to the incredible respect held between the mahout and elephant is the fact that when his mahout, from 20+ feet away, told him to stop, Pu Noy listened. He could easily have charged straight to the field but instead he appeared to roll his eyes (or the elephant equivalent for expressing exasperation and disappointment) and continued on with his scratching.

This first encounter with an elephant showed me how incredibly unique and strong each elephant's personality is and the strength of the bond between an elephant and his mahout. During the rest of my time with the elephants, that was proven to me again and again.

Pu Noy and his mahout Amur
In the forest
Pu Noy next to his mahout's truck
Chin scratching
Riding in the truck to get to Pu Noy

Rice Harvest

One day we were invited to help with the rice harvest by the local community. We hiked down many hills of cornfields to reach the rice paddy fields in the valley below. We gathered in a wooden hut on the side of the fields to wait for everyone to arrive and for it to begin. The waiting took far longer than anticipated as no one seemed in any rush to get working and people arrived leisurely bringing an array of tools and food with them. A fire was started and the older women began preparing an array of food while demolishing a bottle of whiskey, with some help from the men as well. When the harvest began we all moved out into the fields. The rice had already been cut and bound into little bunches and set to dry on top of the stalks of grass in the fields. As they cleared a large space and set down a tarp we were instructed to collect as many bunches of rice as we could carry and set them around the perimeter of the tarp. A large wooden plank was placed in the middle of the tarp and five people stood around it each holding two wood handles with a piece of rope tied between the ends. When enough rice had been piled around they began the process of hitting it. They wrapped a large bundle of the bunches between the sticks with the rope and swung it high over their heads, bringing it down with force onto the wooden plank. The grains of rice went flying, landing in piles on the blue tarp. When the grains had been stripped from the stalks the bunches were discarded to the side and the process restarted. Everyone who wasn’t hitting the rice was involved in bringing the bunches to the tarp, a job that progressively got more difficult as you had to move further and further away to collect the rice. No one could compete with the size of the bundles the old women could carry, wrapping it in pieces of tarp they would sling it over their backs, creating a silhouette where the rice loomed bigger than their body. After a few hours of hard work under the blazing sun we all stopped to rest and enjoy a delicious lunch together in the shade.

Collecting bundles
Thrashing the rice

Cave Time (a Very Unique Thanksgiving)

At the end of my first week we went on an overnight camping trip to a cave. We packed our bags with a blanket, some rice, water, flashlights, and as many warm layers as we had brought. We hiked up over the hill of the village and down the other side of the highway and into the deep forest. At the bottom of the valley we followed a stream winding through thick vegetation until we arrived at the cave site. The cave was up a steep slope from the stream and had a high ceiling and large entrance. The inside was well broken in for camping, with a fire pit already made, a kettle, bamboo mats, and various other bags and supplies. We were told that this cave is often used for meditation by the monks at the temple in the village and we could see their meditation mats set up along rock ledges. As soon as we set our bags down we set out to look for firewood. Dragging large branches up the muddy slope proved challenging but we collected quite the pile. Once we got the fire going and the speaker was set up with music we cooked an elaborate dinner using bamboo tools we made including a mortar and pestle to grind spices, tubes of bamboo to cook eggs and curry, a bamboo skewer to roast eggplants, and made bowls to serve the food. When we had finished with them all the tools were tossed into the fire. The highlight of the camping trip was the night hike where we went and explored two other caves. The first cave was a bit of a tight squeeze to get in and then a steep decline that led to a drop off to an underground river. Making sure to stay far from the edge we inched our way down the slope and into the cave to see hundreds of baby bats flying around, as it is the peak of their breeding season. The staff member Jonny, who was leading the hike, also found a beautiful green and yellow snake nestled behind a rock. The second cave was much bigger, with a large entrance and two main chambers. The second chamber was tall and there was an opening at the very top into the jungle. We all gathered beneath it and stared up into the stars and jungle above. A sturdy vine grew down from the hole, securing itself to the thick clay in the floor of the cave and we all took turns trying to climb it. We also had a shadow puppet competition where we made our thanksgiving turkey, as it happened to be thanksgiving night, and the sounds of my friend's turkey impression echoed off the walls.

The night was cold, so much so I had to move my mat close to the fire at 3am, but Jonny kept the fire going all night and when we all woke up we clustered around it wrapped in our blankets. During the hike out we stopped to do a gibbon survey, positioning ourselves where we had a good view of the forest across the river and scanning with our binoculars for any movement and listening to their calls. We waited for over an hour with no sight of them but a bit later as we were hiking out of the valley we heard their calls echoing behind us.

Our dinner consisting of noodles, two types of curry, rice, eggs, and roasted eggplant

Rice and Cabbage

The food was something in the village that brought me joy and made it feel quite homey. Despite the fact that I wasn’t able to fully immerse myself in the local cuisine due to my incredibly bad spice tolerance – the staple dish of the village is called musuto which is literally just plates of mashed chili peppers – I loved all the food I was served. The food was simple, usually with only a few ingredients in a dish and always with plain white rice as the base, and it was comforting, tasty, fresh, and flavorful. In the village we all lived with separate homestay families who would cook lunch and dinner for us. My favorite dishes were cabbage and noodles, cabbage and egg, and omelets with green beans. The small container of soy sauce that I had brought with me from Chiang Mai proved very useful in adding flavor to the large amounts of white rice with every meal.

The view from my homestay in the mornings

Handicrafts

Some of the activities we were able to do in the village included trying out various traditional handicrafts and cultural activities. These included making fishing nets, weaving, making bamboo baskets, learning pakinyaw language, cooking classes, and cooking sticky rice in bamboo with the mahouts. One of my main takeaways from these activities was how incredibly versatile and widespread the use of bamboo is and just how much of the village's items are made by it. The tools for the nets and weaving were all hand carved from bamboo, the baskets were woven from thin strips of it, spoons and bowls used in the cooking class were made from it, and the stalks of bamboo proved to be incredible cooking vessels over a firepit. One of the most noticeable handicrafts you'll see across the village are the Karen bags. These shoulder bags, all roughly the same size, shape, and design, are used by genuinely everyone there. Whenever someone would drive past on a motorcycle you could bet they would have at least one of these handwoven bags with them. For lunches from our homestays they were always packed in a tupperware and put in one of these bags. This bag became your lunch bag and soon enough you could immediately pick out your lunch from the rest by the unique colors or designs on your bag. When I did the weaving workshop I got to watch the process of making the bags and even try it out myself, though I will admit it was not my strong suit. My favorite item I took home from Thailand is one of these bags that I was able to buy in the village and it will always remind me of my time and the people there.

Fishing nets
Bag weaving
Making sticky rice in bamboo with mahout Patti Toonyia

83 Years Old and Sword Fighting

One night we were invited to the house of the village elder Pattie Jonni. Patti means uncle in pakinyaw language and it is used to refer to most of the mahouts and elders. At his house he made us two kinds of medicine tea from the forest. The first was yellow and was the most bitter thing I have tasted in my life and nearly made me choke. The second was a light green and tasted of slightly bitter and earthy grass. Patti is who the villagers go to if they need treatments for any ailments and he also makes herbal medicine/vitamin balls for the elephants. He was born and raised in the village and is currently 83 years old. He lives alone in a wooden house, though two of his five children still live in the village and come to visit him. He spent years of his life as a mahout and for a time used his elephant to help carry wood to build houses in the village many years ago. He told us stories about when there were still tigers in the village, back when he was a kid, and about the time he spent in the forest. But the real treat came at the end when he got out his swords. Using long wooden swords he demonstrated an elaborate dance/fighting style in which he jumped over the blades, twirled them above his head, and passed them behind his back.

My time in Huay Pakkoot village was short, only two weeks, but it was a very special and unique experience. Hiking through dense forests following in the footsteps of the elephants is an incredibly surreal experience. It was a true privilege to witness the bond between mahout and elephant – a bond built on years of experience, dedication, and incredible amounts of trust. During this experience I was able to see conservation in a different way, one where the economic gain of the local communities is of the utmost importance. Keeping elephants truly wild in Thailand is an extremely difficult task and no matter what there will always be elephant tourism and cruel camps. What we can do is create and invest in sustainable methods that combine conservation and tourism, bringing the elephants back to the forest and into the hands of the people who have traditionally cared for them.