Elephants!

Elephants are quite big you know. In particular, their heads, which are fridge sized. This is emphasised by their tiny eyes that don't just watch you, but judge you as well...

And trunks take some getting used to. You adopt a safe position a few metres away from the elephant but then this thing stretches out towards your face making a loud sucking sound as it breathes in your scent. Slightly freaky. 

Sara and I booked into a "learn how to be a mahout" course (code for normal elephant ride but in a stupid uniform) at Baanchang elephant park. Chang is Thai for elephant and sounds like Xiang, which is is the Chinese. Baan means home. 

We were picked up by a stressed Thai man in a minibus filled with our fellow wannabe mahouts and whizzed around Chiang Mai picking up and dropping off other people before driving out to the hills. We arrived at the park which consisted of some buildings, a lake and elephants. After changing into their unflattering uniform, we were given the talk about the park's mission, which is to rescue mistreated elephants, of which Thailand has many. A popular use of elephants is elephant begging, where someone wanders around a city with his elephant getting money off tourists. The elephant is stressed out by city noise and hot Tarmac hurts their feet. Often they are not fed well either. Elephants are also used in logging which does not provide the nicest life, manual labour never does, but I didn't share my hosts' disapproval. Less damage is caused to a forest if elephants haul logs and not trucks. And as elephants live as long as we do, ex loggers cause a problem. The use of elephants in logging was outlawed in Thailand and the 3000 elephants made redundant are the ones that can now be seen on the streets of Bangkok or in horrific zoos and circuses. 

The park also disapproved of making elephants paint pictures as well as the normal circus tricks of standing on one leg, playing football etc. I don't see that elephant paintings are so bad but the park owner said it was unnatural. 

Then we got to feed the elephants. This involved grabbing some sugar cane and either giving it to a questing trunk or slotting it in their mouths. Their mouths are quite big. And if you try to get some sugar cane back from a trunk's grip, well, you won't win. It's rather fascinating, having a glorified vacuum nozzle waving at you before curling delicately around some cane which promptly disappears into its gaping maw. 

There were around 15 elephants including 2 baby ones. One we were warned to be careful about approaching as she was half blind and 18 months pregnant (her bump was HUGE- elephants are pregnant for 22 months) so was prone to grumpiness. Another was a recent acquisition from a street somewhere and stood in the corner quietly. Too quietly. 

Then learning to ride. 

Step 1. In order to mount elephant, make it lie down by shouting "nolong" (lie down in the local lingo) very loudly. 

Step 2. Keep shouting. 

Step 3. After lots or shuffling the elephant will finally sink to the ground. Step on its knee and jump up onto its back and hang onto the ears as it stands up again. 

Step 4. Hotch forward so you're sitting on its neck, hands resting on its head. 

Step 5. Move forwards by shouting "pai" and kneeing it in the back of its ears. 

Step 6. To turn right, knee it in the left ear and shout "Kwai". Keep kneeing until enough turn has been turned. 

Step 7. To turn left, knee on right ear. 

Step 8. To stop shout "how" and grip with knees. 

Step 9. To dismount, shout "nolong" and then scramble off when it has sunk sufficiently...

The elephant may or may not do what you say...

Elephants are actually quite hairy and their skin is leathery but warm. This makes bare legs itch though. 

Of course whether the elephant did what we wanted was fairly moot as wherever we went the mahout walked beside, hanging onto the ear. They were the ones actually giving directions. I fell a little bit in love with one mahout who not only was very pretty but liked to lounge on the back of his elephant with a rock and roll air of insouciance. 

After lunch ("more rice? Louise: oo yes please. French woman: no zank you...), which I spent admiring Hot Mahout's pool skills, we set off for a ride into the forest. Sara and I shared an elephant. I forget its name but it was the park's only boy elephant. They grow tusks and cows don't so their owners are reluctant to sell them when they can get much more money from ivory. On the way up Sara "steered" and I sat on the back taking photos. One of our group rode the baby elephant which came too. One guy gave his elephant some cane that it reached up with its trunk to pluck from his hand. When we reached the top we got off and the elephants wandered around grazing and scratching. Every now and then you'd see a tree shaking furiously as it got elephant butt itched against it. Many of the trees had bare trunks where the elephants had eaten the bark. Some were just stumps in the ground. The baby elephant ran around trumpeting and being naughty, with its mahout trailing after trying to keep an eye on it. Hot Mahout sat on his elephant and played with his phone. Then back up, with me in front, for the descent. This was slightly tricky as it was quite steep and elephants' backs are rather slippery... and it's a long way to fall! Plus, to slow themselves down, they knock into trees on the way down, like we grab with our hands, so Sara kept nearly getting scraped. 

Then bath time! First the elephants went in with their mahouts. Us trainees stayed back because the first thing elephants do on entering water is drink, the second is to poop so some unlucky soul has to fish this out before we got in. The water was surprisingly cold and the lake floor disturbingly squidgy but Sara and I got on with the job of scrubbing our elephant, who blew water around happily. The baby rushed around spraying everyone with water. Much fun had, as with all toddlers. 

So that was our elephant experience. It was fun but I have to admit, I prefer ponies... Elephants take a rather long time to do anything and whereas Grandpa will let me put a pony on his farm, I'm not sure he'd welcome a pachyderm...