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The man standing in front of me with two small children in tow looked desperate. The three of them — along with more than 100 other people — were waiting in line for the elephant ride, but when the attendant asked him for his tickets, he shrugged.
“We came here to ride these elephants and now they have eaten our tickets,” he repeated. “When we were feeding them fruit just before, one of them grabbed the tickets with her trunk and now they are gone.”
The assistant at the National Elephant Conservation Center in Kuala Gandah, Malaysia (about 100 kilometers northeast of Kuala Lumpur) nodded sympathetically. She had heard his story, or some variation thereof, many times before. “That is unfortunate, sir, but I am sorry. Without tickets you cannot ride.”
Riding an Asian elephant is one of the reasons people come to the center, also known as the Elephant Orphanage Sanctuary. Other attractions are the opportunity to feed and pet the center’s several resident elephants and to splash with them in the nearby river. Zoos and safari parks may give you the opportunity to see elephants up close, but rarely do you have the chance to pet, feed and play with them, much less bathe next to them.
When the center first opened its doors to the public in 1990, it hosted about 2,000 visitors a year, with no formal promotion. Still, word of mouth…
