Elephantine Adventures

There is no graceful way to launch yourself onto the neck of an elephant. Let me clarify - there's no graceful way to do so if you're somewhat inflexible in the hip region and lacking in upper body strength. Oh, and having longer legs would help as well.


But let me back up a bit. For the last two days Lisa and I have been hanging out at an elephant camp near Luang Prabang, in Laos. We're on a mahout experience trek, which means we get to spend more quality time with elephants than the average 1 hour ride that most tourists experience. The camp rehabilitates elephants who previously worked in the logging industry. As their former career involved working 13-14 hour days in dangerous conditions, the elephants seem to enjoy their new gig, spending 3-4 hours a day strolling along a set route by the river with a couple tourists perched on their backs, then allowing the tourists to feed them bananas and sugar cane.



I got to ride on the neck of our elephant straight away the first morning instead of on the very posh seat that straddles the elephant's back, as it was Laos New Years, which means even the elephants are taking a couple days off, and we were 3 people to an elephant. For our first trip we boarded the elephant from a raised platform, so the trainer (mahout) encouraged our elephant, Mae San, to stand near the platform and I just sort of shimmied onto her neck without stopping to think too much about it too much. Excessive examination would have had me freaking out. There's nothing soft about an elephant's hair - it's sort of like sitting on the stiff, very dry bristles of a brush, and the light, pajama-like trousers I was wearing were not adequate protection for my delicate backside. It's also a bit demanding on your inner thigh muscles - think of the bow-legged walk that sometimes afflicts you after horseback riding, then multiply it big time because elephants are large. And unlike riding a horse or even a camel, where you're perched halfway between moving legs, by sitting on the neck of the elephant you're essentially sitting on the shoulders - which means directly above very large moving parts that are propelling us forward. So you sort of need to pay attention, as you get jostled about a fair bit, and falling from that height would be a bit painful, I imagine.



Anyway, back to the task of launching myself onto the neck of an elephant. Well, to be honest, it was highly undignified. After our first ride, the day-trip tourists that had been with us left, and it was just Lisa, me, our guide Nyong (yes, I'm fairly sure I'm butchering the spelling of his name), the mahouts (trainers) and our elephantine friends. The correct mounting technique is to command the elephant to bend her front leg (the command sounds sort of like the word 'song'), while she's still standing. At that point I was supposed to place my right foot on the elephant's bent knee, grab onto her ear quite vigorously, throw my left leg up over my own ear and the elephant's and then sort of scramble up onto her neck. This of course is pretty much impossible to do. Lisa managed to do it on her third attempt, but it required an awkward maneuver that involved bracing her left leg against the elephant's upper leg, and pulling herself up with a lot of upper body strength. Hence my problem with the whole thing. I gave up after 3 or 4 attempts, and we adjourned for lunch.



During lunch I think the professionals must have strategized a bit, because when we returned for our afternoon ride they had the girls sit down, which made getting up into position slightly more feasible. But embarrassingly for me, they still sort of had to push me up from behind, as I got halfway on and then sort of got stuck, my legs straddling the ear of my elephant, which is not correct form at all. Some of the problem was my unwillingness to really tug on the elephant's ear hard enough to pull myself up (yes, worried I'm somehow going to hurt an elephant with my body weight - how screwed up is that?). But the larger issue was my inflexibility and lack of upper body strength, as I stated up front. After riding the elephant's further into the bush, about halfway to where they sleep for the night, we trekked back to the elephant camp, then retired to our balcony for the afternoon to try and stay cool.



On the second day we left camp at 7am to trek about a half hour to meet the elephants again. After another completely ungraceful mounting, we rode the elephants down to the river for bath time. The mahouts went with us, and the elephants just walk right into the river to the point that their upper back and heads were the only parts still above water - and well us, thankfully. The elephants also use the river as a toilet, and there was something about watching a gargantuan elephant dropping float past that made the experience very authentic and well, unhygienic at the same time. My elephant seemed to want to completely submerge herself, so it was a bit of a struggle to focus on staying on her neck and help scrub her down at the same time. Lisa's technique was impressive, as she turned and scrambled around on the elephant's back and got the hard to reach places. I left those spots to the mahout that was helping me wash my elephant. We then rode the elephants back up the riverbank so they could get ready for work, as another group of day trippers were already on their way out of town for a morning of rides.



After breakfast we embarked on our hill trek - 15 kilometres of sweating our way through bush, field, and rural villages. The scenery was absolutely fantastic - ironically, we got the views we'd expected to see further north in Luang Nam Tha. A revolting amount of sweating happened (the joys of the hot season in Laos), but the hike itself wasn't that difficult, and according to Nyong, we made very good time. It seems to be the strategy of every guide I've met to overestimate the length of time a trek will take, then congratulate us when we end up being one of the fastest groups he's ever had. You end up feeling good about yourself though - and when you're tired and sweaty and aching, you take what you can get.

Anyway, I'm still contemplating career options for when I go home. After my experience with the lovely ladies at the Elephant Camp, running away to the circus to ride elephants seems like a good option. Except for if I had to wear a spandex unitard littered with sequins - that seems to be the uniform of choice for elephant riding circus ladies. I'm really not sure I could pull that off, but I'll file it away as an option.