Dr Chan Aye gives a check-up to a child in a Karen village in the Bago Yoma near Taungoo. Pic: Douglas Long

THIRTEEN years ago, Dr Tin Thein took a small group of foreign tourists into the mountains west of Taungoo. They were interested in seeing Myanma Timber Enterprise elephants clearing trees in the Bago Yoma, and he had the local connections to make it happen.

This was 1995 – Taungoo had barely reopened to tourists after years of insurgency. The “Visit Myanmar Year” and subsequent tourism boycott campaign were at least 12 months away. The number of annual visitors to the country was still in the tens of thousands.

But Dr Tin Thein saw a future in the elephant camp trips – and a way help the poor communities who work in the timber industry.

His son, Dr Chan Aye, now runs what should be considered one of the bright spots in a tourism industry that has recently been battered by one disaster after another.

It is success built on the small stream of foreign independent travellers who come to Myanmar each year and stray off the Yangon-Inle-Mandalay-Bagan path.

Many are after more from their Myanmar experience than pagodas and picturesque lakes and, increasingly, are looking to ecotourism to fill the gap.

It’s not surprising that Taungoo is a popular choice. While many of Myanmar’s ecotourism sites are in difficult-to-reach places and require government permission, Taungoo is located just a few hundred kilometres north of Yangon, with easy road and rail connections. The elephant camp tours are also reasonably priced, at US$170 for one person, $100 for two and $80 for three people.

Dr Chan Aye is hesitant to call his elephant camp tours ecotourism, a term that had barely been coined when Dr Tin Thein started the business. He seems – like many – unsure of the exact meaning.

But, in practice, it is the best kind of ecotourism, with minimal environ-mental impact and financial benefits and employment for local people.

At the most simple level, watching the elephants work is an amazing sight. The logs, several metres in diameter, weigh well over a tonne (1000 kilograms), with one end tapered so the log doesn’t catch on the forest floor. Several holes are cut so a chain can be looped and attached to the elephant’s harness and then, with some coaxing from the oosie (also known as the mahout) and his assistant, the pet chate, the elephant drags the log.

It’s not an easy task, even for an elephant. The 27-year-old male in front of us is visibly struggling, dropping to its knees as the strength drains from its legs and letting slip low roars of exertion.

Finally, after 30 minutes, the teak log is laid to rest beside about 20 others. This is where elephants show their versatility; they are surprisingly agile and can easily manoeuvre the valuable timber with their trunk.

Dr Chan Aye’s tours are also thought-provoking and touch on several environmental issues in Myanmar. The country is home to the largest number of domesticated or captive elephants in the world, and the process of capturing them from the wild is dangerous for both humans and the elephant.

“Breaking” wild elephants is particularly difficult and cruel; the elephants are left for days without food or water until they stop struggling and are slowly coaxed “back to life”, as Dr Chan Aye puts it, by trainers who stroke the elephants while singing traditional songs. It is not uncommon for elephants to die while being broken.

The timber extraction is also difficult and tiring work, and elephants have been known to drop dead while working, the oosie says.

But, while it’s physically punishing, the work doesn’t seem to be cruel and the life expectancy of a working elephant is generally higher than their counterparts both in the wild and in zoos.

Because of the elephants’ value, they are kept healthy and well-fed, working until early afternoon to avoid the heat with every third day off. At night, the elephants are free to roam in the jungle and are rounded up each morning by the oosie.

Myanmar’s oosies are “without doubt … the best trained and most skilled mahouts in the world”, according to a report by NGO EleAid, which also calls Myanmar a “world leader” in veterinary knowledge and care of elephants.

Timber extraction in Myanmar is also a contentious issue but it is argued that by restricting logging to the confines of the Myanmar Selection Strategy (MSS), and using elephants to extract the timber, the effects on the environment are minimised.

In the 2006 EleAid report, author Charles Begley concluded that government timber policy could provide a “stable platform on which to build a world class conservation policy” that could protect wild elephants and their habitat.

“[The government] could also use extensive natural areas and an enlightened environmental policy to build a major ecotourism industry. The income from such a business could match or even surpass that of timber exports,” Mr Begley said.

But for now real ecotourism is practised by just a few tourism operators in Myanmar, mostly small operations like Dr Chan Aye’s.

“Recently I have been taking out groups of foreigners about five days a week,” he says, as we career along the Taungoo-Pyay road that crosses the Bago Yoma.

The dust the vehicle kicks up from the road is so pervasive we have to wear face masks, and the trees beside the road are coated in a thin layer of orange powder.

About halfway back to Taungoo we stop at a small school. About 50 students, in the familiar green longyi and white shirt, are crammed into the single-room building.

Dr Chan Aye hauls over a bag that has been sitting in the back of our pickup truck all day – it’s full of books and pencils for the children, who show their gratitude by singing a couple of English-language songs for us.

It is just one small example of how tourism can improve the well-being of local people. There are also economic benefits, such as employment, and Dr Chan Aye provides free medical assistance to people living in the area.