Thailand
Elephant Mahout Project, Pattaya
Offers 'volunteer' placements where participants learn to ride the elephants like a mahout. Update: we believe this has now closed.
Thai Elephant Home, Chiang Mai
Offers an ‘own an elephant for the day’ experience which includes riding your ‘own’ elephant. It also operates a captive breeding programme, and visitors are invited to ‘play’ with the baby elephants. Habituating them in this way ensures they cannot be returned to the wild.
Chiang Dao Elephant camp, Chiang Mai
Training young elephants to paint and perform. Buys and breeds elephants, which are then trained to perform and kept in captivity permanently.
Patara Elephant Farm, Chiang Mai
An elephant breeding farm which offers rides . The babies are bred to be kept in captivity.
Maesa Elephant Camp
Maesa is now under new management and it looks as though significant changes have been made. According to their website elephants are no longer chained, giving them complete freedom of movement, and mahouts do not ride them or use the hook to control them. We are waiting for independent confirmation of these changes, and that ‘elephant performances’ no longer take place, before moving Maesa off this list.
Elephant Stay, Royal Elephant Kraal Village, Ayutthaya
A tourist focused 'working elephant village', visitors are given branded t-shirts, ride elephants as part of learning to be a mahout, and pose for photos with elephants.
Thai Elephant Conservation Center, Lampang
Not to be confused with the hospital, this is a separate, government owned elephant camp with daily elephant shows and rides.
Surin Elephant Round-up
This festival has been reported for its abuses of elephants including getting them to perform tricks for tourists, engage in mock battles and an 'elephant buffet'.
BMP Elephant Care project
The elephants here reportedly don't live on site but are in fact rented and brought to the camp daily. When not in the camp they are being used for riding, trekking and shows elsewhere. There have also been multiple reports of cruel behaviour at the hands of the people looking after them as well as of grown adults sitting on baby elephants for photo opportunities.
Anantara Golden Triangle Camp
This luxury hotel has an onsite elephant camp/mahout village. It does not offer rides, but instead organises various experiences with the elephants, including dinner, picnics and sunset tours.