Announcing you rode an elephant on vacation should be met with the same horror as admitting you ate dog meat, says JOANNA LUMLEY

One of the most magical moments of my life was an unforgettable encounter with elephants. I was filming a series six years ago – Joanna Lumley’s India – for ITV and had trekked through the forest with a local wildlife expert, Ganesh, following a female elephant for hours.

While we saw telltale signs such as fresh manure, and even smelled the unique scent of a nearby elephant, this majestic beast remained maddeningly, yet rather miraculously, hidden.

That was until Ganesh pointed into the jungle. There, to my delight, were not one but two elephants, a mother and her calf, sauntering slowly out of the trees to make their way through a tea plantation.

As we watched enraptured, they were followed by another elephant, then another, and suddenly there was a whole herd: an elderly matriarch, young mothers and their adorable babies, their heads barely peeking above the tea bushes as they gazed at a cooling swamp. trotting in which you can bathe. It was like falling into the Garden of Eden.

Imagine that those beautiful calves could be snatched from the wild, tied with ropes in a small cage and beaten into submission with iron bull hooks to perform tricks for tourists, it is madness belief.

But such is the horrific fate that has befallen thousands of Asian elephants trapped in unscrupulous locations promoted by UK travel agencies.

I have loved these animals since I was a child, born in India where elephants are an integral part of Hindu culture, and spent a childhood enchanted by the stories of Babar The Elephant. So I find their brutal mistreatment all the more unbearable.

Circus elephants performing tricks is a humiliating spectacle that thankfully is a thing of the past in this country. But shockingly, British travel agencies are still exposing their clients to these cruel shows abroad, in which these magnificent creatures ride tricycles, paint paintings, throw darts with their trunks or ‘dance’.

If only tourists were in awe of the apparent playfulness of these animals, they would know the cruel price that has been paid.

Every year, hundreds of young elephants, like those sweet babies I saw floating through that plantation, are snatched from their loving families and lives of freedom. Often their devoted mothers are killed trying to save them.

Once captured, these traumatized, vulnerable calves – who, like us, would normally stay with their mothers for the first 16 years – are tied to stakes with ropes that grip their flesh tightly so they cannot move.

They are starving, dehydrated and ferocious and often beaten. Their flesh is torn with vicious bullhooks, their legs shattered with iron bars, and nails are even hammered into their heads as they cry pitifully. This gruesome process is called ‘Pajan’ – ‘breaking the spirits’ – a cruel and unnecessary way of training these highly intelligent creatures.

Half of the calves that undergo this barbaric process die.

I learned about this through working with the Save The Asian Elephants (STAE) charity.

The CEO, Duncan McNair, showed me typical bullhooks used to commit these atrocities – they were covered in elephant blood. His voice broke as he related what he had seen and heard.

The bull hooks stick in the softest places – usually between the elephant’s shoulder blades, in the eyes and the back and hind legs.

Numerous captive elephants show festering wounds in those areas that can become septic. Once broken in body and mind, they are forced to spend the rest of their miserable lives entertaining tourists at unethical elephant locations – UEVs.

Elephants are known for their cognitive abilities and have been subject to the will of mankind in work and war for millennia. But since the explosion of package holidays in the 1960s, tourism has led to a sharp increase in its exploitation.

It is one of the reasons why the decline in elephant numbers in Asia is significantly worse than in Africa.

In the 19th century there were millions of Asian elephants, today there are barely 40,000, of which 40 percent are kept in captivity.

There are about 3,600 captive and working elephants in Thailand alone, their numbers have increased by as much as 70 percent between 2010 and 2020. Social media has no doubt played a role as vacationers crave selfies with these beautiful beasts to post online.

There are animal welfare laws against the abuse of captive elephants and other animals in both Thailand and India, but the tourism industry is too powerful for any meaningful enforcement.

It’s not through treats and gentle encouragement that a performing calf can hover its foot above the heads of tourists, game enough to lie down for them as part of a show.

You don’t want to think what could go wrong if one of these animals, exhausted by the scorching sun on their backs, were thrown off balance, or frightened by the shouts and cheers of the crowd. At least 700 people have been killed in such locations over the past 30 years and another 900 have been seriously injured.

The scandal is that these horrors wouldn’t happen without the demand from UK-based tour companies, which promote nearly 300 unethical elephant sites overseas.

Despite the cheerful pictures of tourists being carried by elephants through the Thai jungle or to the Amber Fort in Jaipur, India, the truth is that every mounted elephant has been mistreated, while the riding itself is very harmful.

Elephant quills are fragile. Bones point upwards and are not designed to support weight, certainly not the heavy metal thrones that cut into their flesh and on which sit two, three or four tourists, weighing up to 300 kg. Broken vertebrae and often damaged feet and legs are the result of being ridden day in and day out. When they can no longer work, the elephants often starve.

Announcing over dinner that you rode an elephant on vacation or saw them perform in a show should be met with the same horrified silence as admitting you ate dog meat or clubbed seals. It’s really no better.

Take the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka, a typically cruel and unforgiving place where elephants are chained for long periods and forcibly forced to reproduce in captivity. Shockingly, this vicious location is featured on the websites of travel giant Expedia, Southall Travel and other UK companies.

Until the Mail got in touch this week, Expedia was also promoting Thailand’s gruesome and dangerous Nong Nooch Village Garden, one of the worst sites for elephant abuse, and Thailand’s Khao Kheow Open Zoo, where elephants are forced to swim up and down in a deep tank with glass walls.

Expedia Group said, “We appreciate you flagging these activities and removing Nong Nooch Garden from our site as it violates our Animal Welfare Policy.”

It added that it does not ‘sell’ activities at Pinnawala Elephant Sanctuary (although Expedia’s website still suggests visiting there) and stressed: ‘We continue to work with global, leading conservation and animal protection groups to ensure that the wildlife interactions we offer are safe and do not encourage animal or human exploitation.”

Southall Travel did not respond to a request for comment.

However, there is now real hope.

Britain is leading the way with new measures that will begin to reverse this global tragedy that threatens the survival of the world’s most iconic species: not just elephants, but also monkeys, big cats, dolphins, ostriches and many others are snatched from the wild and exploited for tourism. The Animals (Low-Welfare Activities Abroad) Bill, the culmination of years of work by Duncan McNair, Save The Asian Elephants and his allies, passed every stage in the House of Commons unopposed, as well as second reading in the Lords last month.

If all goes according to plan, it will soon become law banning the promotion in the UK of practices that abuse vertebrate species in the name of tourism abroad.

If the practice were illegal here, then it becomes illegal to advertise it.

Polls show that more than 90 percent of Britons support the bill. Nearly 1.2 million have signed the Save The Asian Elephants petition, with a further 33 million signing other petitions in line with it, demonstrating that British people love animals and few would knowingly conspire in their abuse.

So I trust the government to ensure that this bill is not delayed and that the law is strictly enforced – imprisonment would be richly deserved, but fines will still make people question the brutality involved.

Anything less will cause the tragic torture and eventual loss of elephants and other endangered species such as monkeys and big cats in the wild.

So please don’t ride elephants, never watch them perform, and help us end this callous, abhorrent abuse.

Joanna Lumley is donating her fee for this article to STAE.