From the Mouth of the Mahout

Joey got most of the elephant story right but left out a few pertinent details.

1. Our guide told us the words for stop, go, faster, right, and left before we got to the elephant camp. Since I had no intention of riding on the head of an enormous pachyderm, I didn't pay attention.

2. Sitting on an elephants neck feels more precarious than it looks in the group picture. You sit high up on the neck, close to the back of the skull, and prop your knees up behind the ears. The picture of my thigh and the elephant's ear in Joey's post resulted from me trying to take a picture of my view. As you can tell, I was not too stable up there. I am sure there is a trick to balancing without exerting a lot effort but I hung on too tightly with my knees. By the end of our thirty minute ride, my thighs were shaking. Also, elephants have very wiry hairs on their head (think the worst beard stubble, sparsely spread but long) and I was in shorts. Ouch!

3. Per number one, the first time our elephant took off, the only word I could remember was kuai, faster. I wisely chose not to employ this one and instead just hung on. She would give me a little warning when she was going to speed up by pinning her ears back. This had the added benefit of keeping me in place. Do not doubt that it was scary when she ran but I was more securely attached at those times than any others. She was smart enough to avoid any mishaps without my guidance; though she did have a tendency to run straight towards water, stopping short every time.

Although scary, unnerving, really high up, etc, it was an incredible experience. I was uncertain how I would feel about doing the elephant ride because of ethical concerns. We went to the Elephant XL Camp, run by the Elephant Park Project and Tiger Trails. They currently have four adult females and one three year old male. Their fifth female died a couple of months ago at the age of 105. The elephants seem well taken care of by their mahouts and interested in what is happening around them. There is a definite heirarchy amongst the ladies (see number three) and, to this outsider, it seemed like this lifestyle of carting around tourists as a herd is healthier than working with loggers. I am glad that we did it.