An elephant back ride is as essential to an authentic South-East Asian travel experience to most people around the world as a trip to Chandni Chowk is to any Dilli shaadi. It's one of the biggest tourist attractions on this side of the world. And while a slow tour on the back of gentle giant seems like a lovely, fairly harmless prospect, there's a dark torturous secret behind every elephant ride out there.

It's isn't in an elephant's nature to let humans ride it, and to train them for rides, to paint or play musical instruments for human entertainment, they are put through severe torture as babies - in a heartbreaking process called phajaan, as reported by Circa.

Literally translating to 'crush', phajaan is a torture technique directed at breaking the independent spirit of the elephant so they obey their human masters. And it is deeply and permanently traumatising for these innocent animals.