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Published: December 20th 2006
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Wowwwweeee! Just spent the last 2 days in the jungle training as a Mahout (elephant driver), which was just brilliant!
Went out to an elephant camp, just me and another girl, Stina and our guide. We met the 3 Mahouts who have lived and worked with the 3 elephants out there their whole lives. I just LOVE elephants and was so amazing to be up close to them and touch them.
While waiting for the morning tourists to finish going on elephant rides, we looked around the local village with our guide and went into a school, hung out with the cute little children and visited the local temple.
When the tourists were gone, I was taught the 'elephant language' - learning command words in Lao - essentials such as GO ("bai!"), STOP ("how!"), TURN AROUND ("sok!") and COME CLOSE ("tsoi!"), and how to kick the elephant's ears to make it go or change direction. I then climbed onto the elephant (for this time, the easy way, from the high mounting platform) and sat on it's neck (bloody scary, cos it's so high, nothing to hold onto and sooo painful on my bum!), kicked the back of its
ears with both feet, shouted "BAI, BAI!" and away we went! Was so scary!! Of course had the Mahout sitting on the tourist seat behind me in case anything went wrong!
Trekked 2 hours into the jungle, with me driving and shouting as loudly as I could, although kept forgetting the words because was just so overcome with excitement with riding an elephant for the first time, as well as concentrating on trying to balance myself and not falling off as the elephant walked up and down steep slopes.
After 2 hours, my bum was SORE from her spine and was glad to get off, back at the camp and fed my elephant (Miss Namchuan) billions of bananas as a reward for having me kick her ears all afternoon!
Had a leisurely lunch sitting on the veranda of our basic but cute wooden hut where we were to sleep, while the afternoon tourists took a ride. When everyone was gone, Stina and I were presented with Mahout's clothing (very unsexy blue baggy trousers and shirt), we took off the big heavy tourist seat and, accompanied by a Mahout, I rode the elephant (this time, the male elephant
which was HUGE) along with the other 2 an hour out into the jungle to their beds. This involved crossing a large river, which we did on the elephants' backs! Typically, my elephant decided to have a play in the river, dipping itself up and down in the water, so was suddenly plunged, neck deep into the muddy river, screaming and holding my camera above my head - was brilliant!
Took the elephants to their bed, in a lush green clearing surrounded by mountains, and then trekked back to our camp. When we got to the river, we didn't have the elephants this time, so.....we just waded across in the mud - arghh!
The next day we were awake at 6am to trek back out to the elephants (again wading across the freezing river) to wake them up for the day's work - they were pretty grumpy and although my elephant kneeled on command, it was NOT happy with me climbing over it's face to get on! (no easy tourist platforms to use this time!) It kept getting annoyed and moving away - although don't blame it really - it's not the best way to be woken up,
with someone stepping onto your face....
Made our way back through the jungle, with the Mahouts singing Lao songs. Felt so free and close to the animals, away from all the tourists, was really amazing. On the way, the elephants were having their breakfast and had to keep shielding myself as it pulled whole trees down onto my head (despite me shouting "YA! YAAAA!" (stop it, STOP IT!!!))
We reached the river again and it was time for elephant washing! (they were soo filthy from sleeping). This time was prepared for getting absolutely soaked and the elephants lay down in the river while I stood on it's head, scrubbing it with a big brush!
Back at the camp, the tourists were waiting and people, seeing us arrive on the elephants, asked us "so, how long have you worked here?' Felt chuffed!
We left camp and did a 4 hour trek through beauuuutiful mountainous jungle, through some tiny villages, to the Tad Sae waterfalls. The falls were gorgeous - they cascaded through the trees into hundreds of turqoise pools, and we swam and ate lunch there which was a perfect end to our trip.
Ok, so
this has been a very long blog entry for only 2 days, but was really a fantastic experience. Just being with the Mahouts and living as they did for 2 days, feeling completely on the local side of things for once and so amazing being so close to the animals, riding them bare-backed - felt like a little jungle girl!
Ahhh I love elephants 😊
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