What?

We spend a month in northern Thailand learning what it takes to change the world, and we save some elephants along the way too.

---

Specifically, we explore the cultural, ecological, and political issues faced by environmentalists and wildlife organizations in their ongoing struggle to save the Asian elephant. This is global politics at the grass-roots level. The organizations and individuals we work with are dedicated to bringing about large-scale change one elephant at a time.

That’s a lot to cover, we know, so we’ve grouped everything into four one-week sections:

We spend our first week at Elephant Nature Park living with rescued elephants. You’ll stay in raised bamboo huts with thirty elephants living just outside your window. You’ll meet the eles, learn their stories from the mahouts and hear of the hardships both have faced. We meet with Lek Chailert, founder of the ENP and Journey to Freedom to discuss the progress that has been made and what’s still to be done.

For the middle two weeks of the trip, we'll live at Spicy Thai, the number-one ranked hostel in Asia. From there, we spend a week exploring Thai culture. This helps us understand how conservation efforts are rooted in a cultural context, and is also a lot of fun.

---

The next week is all about exploring the wilderness, including a trek in the nearby jungle by some amazing waterfalls. You'll design your own conservation project, while visiting conservation efforts such as a tiger breeding facility.

We do important work but that doesn’t mean we don’t make the most of our surroundings and put aside time to explore the lighter side of things. We spend a day zip lining at Jungle Flight, evenings bowling or playing volleyball, some afternoons rafting and tubing, and lots of time out in the city. Chiang Mai is the kind of city where you can spend the morning at a thousand-year-old temple and then order-in from Pizza Hut for dinner.

Our final week, we go into the jungle to join the Journey to Freedom project and help release elephants into their wild jungle habitats. We get to live in a hill tribe village, teaching and learning from the people who call the Thai jungle their home.

So, we'll see you on the trail.