Ban Ta Klang Elephant Village

Kui Mahout Community With A Long Elephant Keeping Tradition; The Surin Elephant Round Up Is Held In The Province Each November · Tha Tum, Surin

Ban Ta Klang is a village in Tha Tum district in the north of Surin province, in the lower north-east of Thailand, where the Kui people have lived with elephants for generations. Kui men were once famous for capturing wild elephants in the forests along the Cambodian border and training them for work, war and royal service, and today many families in and around the village still keep an elephant at home, tethered beside the house under the trees. A government-backed elephant study centre in the village runs a museum on the Kui and their elephants, and it stages elephant shows; welfare standards in the village vary, and animal-welfare groups criticise riding and performing. The better visit is quieter: watch the elephants being taken to bathe in the river, walk the village lanes, see the elephant cemetery and museum, and stay a night in a homestay. Each November the province holds the big Surin Elephant Round-up in Surin town, about an hour away. Nearby are the Khmer towers of Prasat Sikhoraphum and the silk-weaving villages of Surin.

Ta Klang, Tha Tum, Tha Tum, Surin, 32120, Thailand

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the elephant study centre's visitor area and museum open daily from about 8.30 or 9 am to about 4 or 4.30 pm, with no regular weekly closing day known, and shows on a fixed schedule, commonly one in the morning and one in the afternoon; last entry to the museum is usually about half an hour before closing. The village itself is a living community open at all times, and elephants bathe mostly in the morning and late afternoon. The Surin Elephant Round-up is held in Surin town around the third weekend of November on dates set each year. The traps that ruin a day are arriving at noon when the elephants are resting and the bathing is over, relying on the last afternoon bus back to Surin, turning up in Surin on the round-up weekend without a room, and assuming the museum keeps the same hours as the shows. Confirm current times before relying on them.

Ban Ta Klang Elephant Village on Spottos · Explore more places on Spottos