Elephant back safaris are not only provided a bountiful financial benefit for their owner, they are actually the life's blood of Chitwan.

94,85% of domestic captive elephants are chained for more than 12 hours per day. They start to work at 15 and up to 60 years old.

Most often, mahouts are from father to son.

At three years old, elephants are trained by their future mahouts in order to work with humans. Usually, they spend their whole lives together.

Mahouts need to spend the entire day looking after the elephants.

Rajesh, a mahout, prepares bowls of grass and rice, the elephant favorit treat.

A mahout with his son and the elephant they have in charge.

Mahouts are usually housed by two, away from their family.

Rajesh eats his dal bhat, the traditional dish of Nepal. It is rice, dal soup and vegetable curry.

His attention is always on his elephant.

He makes a cigarette with ganja to get away from his duty.

And then, he takes a little nap.

Mahout's housing is generally spartan and unhealthy.

A sincere affection exists between the mahout and his elephant.

The job is filled with risks. Mahouts believe that the use of a stick is essential.

Mahouts prepare the elephant for tourist ride.

In Sauhara Chitwan, before Covid pandemic, there were 65 private captive elephants, half of them has been sold in India cause of the cost.

Elephant safari is still one of the major tourist activities in Chitwan national park mainly for Indian and Nepalese tourists, this practice being disapproved by western people.

The cost of a elephant safari is 1850 rupees (13€) to 2000rps (14€) for one and half hour and National park fee: 1800 rps (12€) for foreign, 1000rps (7€) for SAARC and 50 rps (0,30€) for Nepali.

They used to do seven rides a day but now it's limited to four.The average weight carried by the elephants is 450kg on each trip which includes "Hauda" or "Gadi" equivalent to 100kg, four people and Mahout of average 350kg or more.

Elephant after the work.

Mahouts start their daily work at 4am until 10pm.