Elephant Riding at Amer Fort, India
After documenting elephant riding at Amer Fort, Moving Animals published our footage with a variety of leading video platforms to reach the millions of potential tourists who are helping to fuel the demand.
Collaborations with The Logical Indian, UNILAD and PETA
+ 4.2M Video Views
across social media
2 Video
collaborations
Over 100
Elephants
The Issue
Amer Fort (also known as Amber Fort) is one of India’s biggest tourist attractions, forming part of the ‘cultural triangle’, and attracting thousands of global tourists every day. However, it is infamous for its use of elephants, where over 100 elephants, many of whom are blind and lame, are forced to haul tourists up and down the steep fort.
Moving Animals spent three days filming activity at the fort, as well the ‘elephant village’ where the elephants are kept at night.
During this time we witnessed elephants forced to work despite being blind or suffering from wounds or cracked feet - one mahout (handler) had even embedded sharp metal into his wooden rod as a form of control. In the village, we found that the elephants are either giving more rides or are kept heavily chained and alone in “concrete boxes”. Many were swaying repetitively - a sign of severe psychological distress.
Solutions For Change:
Moving Animals launched our investigation into Amer Fort with a variety of leading video platforms that spanned across various demographics.
UNILAD
The footage was first launched with viral social media platform UNILAD, where it received over 2.5 million views, educating a predominantly young, Western audience - who are key contributors to the demand in elephant riding and are an audience that may not engage with animal advocacy issues on a daily basis.
The Logical Indian
We also worked with popular video news platform The Logical Indian to produce a video investigation on the issue, which was watched by nearly 750,000 and sparked conversations about elephants in captivity to an Indian audience.
The thousands of comments across our work were a testament to how powerful social media can be when creating change for good, with commentators stating that: “I can’t believe this is happening”; “I no longer want to ride an elephant”; “I deeply regret that I rode one, I thought it was ethical”.
People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals (PETA)
Among those who have since produced content using our visuals of Amer Fort is PETA who have long campaigned against elephant riding. They produced and shared a video across their affiliates collectively received over 1.5 million views, helping to raise awareness about the abuse behind elephant riding.
Use these visuals
Visit the Entertainment gallery on the Moving Animal archive. For related footage, please get in touch.