14 elephants get apologies and a fruit feast after unique ceremony in Trang
Fourteen elephants were treated to a fruit buffet during a rare annual ceremony held in the southern province of Trang on Saturday.
The elephants, each with a mahout on the back, lined up along a 30-metre-long makeshift table strewn with sugarcanes, bananas, watermelons, and pineapples — all their favourite foods.
The pachyderms looked relaxed as they munched the fruits in front of more than 100 local residents in Trang’s Yan Ta Khao district. Many of the spectators also offered food to the tame jumbos.
The elephants’ buffet was held as part of a ceremony conducted by Hem Hemarat, a 93-year-old local expert of the “tham kwan chang” rite to bless elephants for good health and safety from evil spirits.
The ceremony, passed on for generations in the man’s family, is said to be the only one held in Trang.
Before the ceremony, all the elephants were bathed to clean them. During the ceremony, the handlers got the elephants to form a ring around Hem. A Buddhist monk sprinkled holy water on the elephants and their mahouts during the ceremony.
Hem’s grandson Puttachat, 40, said the ceremony was aimed at warding off any evil spirits that might have “followed” the elephants from the forest where they worked. The ceremony was believed to make the elephants less likely to panic, he said.
The ceremony was also meant to allow the elephants’ owners and handlers to apologise to them for having made them work over the past year, he said.
