Welcome to this week’s episode of Low Season Traveller Insider Guides, the podcast where we speak to the locals to learn what the experience is like for travellers during the low season months in their destination.
I’m Ged Brown your host for this week’s episode and today we return to Northern Thailand where Nikki Morrison has been on location near the Myanmar border.
As regular listeners will know, we’ve been working with Nikki Morrison as she travels the world during the low seasons to help Low Season Traveller in our mission to draw more attention to the challenges of overtourism and seasonality whilst extolling the virtues of low season travel.
Nikki met up with Sarah Blaine whilst on her journey through Northern Thailand recently to learn more about her work with the elephant mahouts.
The Mahouts Elephant Foundation is a unique organisation in Thailand working to re-wild captive elephants and allow them to return to the cloud forest along the northern Myanmar border. It is only possible with the support of the elephant owners and mahouts who in the past have had little choice but to sell elephants into the tourist trade. Tourism is still vital to the success of this project, and by visiting the village as a guest of the Karan tribes who live there you both help to sustain a way of life and liberate elephants who have lived captive lives, in some cases for decades. Sarah is the woman behind the idea, and she invited Nikki to experience it for herself as part of her Low Season Adventure.
And you can learn more about Chiang Mai and what it’s like during it’s low season months here.
