Mahoutin' (A really long story)

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The elephant is the national symbol of Thailand. It's image is printed on bags of concrete, various food products, and bottles of beer. In the old kingdom of Siam, they led troops on the battlefields instead of horses. When an off-color, or "white" elephant is born, it is considered very auspicious and an honor to donate it to the King's private stables. Even the country of Thailand is shaped like the head of an elephant. Thailand had so many elephants at one time that they were used for logging and farming duties. But with their numbers now plummeting with the encroachment of man, and logging now illegal, elephants are now used for one purpose only: tourism.

There are a number of elephant camps around the mountains of Northern Thailand that are a major draw to the region. When our parents visited in December, we went to a large one to the north of Chiang Mai called Maesa. They had a particularly good show there, with elephants trained to kick enormous soccer balls, paint elaborate pictures, and throw darts at a target. We pet a playful baby who was less than a year old, and rode on the backs of giants who were over 60. It was a great experience to be so close to these animals, and it was something that Suz and I wanted to do again before we left.

With extra time left to visit our favorite places in Thailand before we returned home, we vowed to get close to the elephants once more. On the way back from the ruins of Sukothai, we stopped in Lampang for a two day mahout training course at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center.

A mahout is a person who is bonded to an elephant. He trains, feeds, and cares for the animal every day of it's life. Since elephants can live to be 80 years old, sometimes a mahout must also train his son to pair with the same animal (elephants can become very cranky in their old age and refuse to listen to anyone other than their mahout). They invest years of their lives getting a two ton animal to follow instructions. In the beginning, these are for practical purposes, such as carrying huge amounts of food home for the evening, or lying down in the river to get a bath. By the time all is said and done, a mahout has a list of commands that the elephant follows to a tee. They can pick up a dropped flip-flop, roll over on the ground, or spray a trunk-full of water directly into someone's crotch. And on the other side, the mahout understands his elephant's signals as well. He knows if she is cranky, sick, upset, or scared. After years of practice day in and day out, the mahout and elephant understand each other perfectly.

So what could Suzanne and I get out of a two-day course? Could we really create a bond with the animal? Probably not, but it became apparent in the first 10 minutes that the camp was sure as hell going to try.

As soon as our bus had dropped us off in the front of the Conservation Center, and we had made the long walk up to the offices, we were quickly ushered inside to begin our paperwork. Some of the questions were a little alarming; What medicines were we allergic to? Did we have any medical conditions? Who should they contact in case of emergency? Before we could fill out all of the questionaire, Supat, one of the mahout course directors, ushered us into the bathrooms to change into our new clothes - fisherman pants and a button-down shirt that were made of a material halfway between cotton and denim. As soon as we emerged we were off again, half-running across the compound towards the performance arena.

Two elephants awaited us in the empty arena, accompanied by their mahouts who stood directly next to them. The mahouts were dressed in the same outfit as we wore, only accessorized by safari-style hats and short poles with metal hooks on the ends. We made hasty introductions; "James, this is Nut (pronounced Noot). Suzanne, this is Tek." We quickly shook hands, and our attention was brought directly to the two-ton beasts that swayed gently beside us. The elephants were, well, huge. We were certainly not the first trainees they had met, and we were far from being the last. But secondary to that was the fact that we had no sugar cane or bananas with us. And that's the thing with an enormous animal that needs to eat one-tenth of it's body weight everyday - it's always, always, about the food. Always. The elephants we would be paired with for the next two days looked at us with complete disinterest.

"OK James, so here is what you are going to do." said Supat, quickly getting us underway. "You grab a handfull of skin right behind the front leg here, and then, song soong!" My elephant stuck out it's right ear and raised it's massive leg, "You grab the top of the ear, step on the leg, and, umphhh!" Supat jumped off the raised knee of the elephant and threw his left leg over it's back, until he was straddling her neck. "Now when you sit here, you move forward with your knees up and your feet behind the ears. To get back down, you say hap soong!" the elephant once again stuck out it's ear and lifted it's leg, "and you grab the ear, side, and step on the leg to get to the ground. OK? Now you try."

"Um, Oh....kay." I murmured as Supat went over to show Suzanne the same routine. "Sang sung!" I shouted, immediately conscious of how badly I was pronouncing the words. The elephant didn't move.

"No Jem! Song soong! Song soong!" Nut shouted at me. He was right behind me and left no doubt that we were going to get this right.

"Song soooonnnggg!" I commanded, but it didn't matter because the elephant had already heard Nut and had assumed the position. I grabbed an ear, stood on the knee, and hoisted myself over it;s back. With a little scrambling, I managed to straddle the neck, and there it was. Within 10 minutes of being dropped off on the side of a highway, I was 15 feet in the air and sitting on an elephant's head.

"OK Jem! Good! Now, hap soong Jem! Hap soong!"

The elephant once again stuck out it's ear and lifted it's leg. I grabbed hold, slid off, and dangled for a good 5 seconds as my leg searched for the knee I was supposed to step on. I felt Nut's cane nudge my foot to it, and I stepped down and backed away to admire my new fleshy jungle-gym. She hadn't flinched or complained once.

"Very good, James. Now try this one." said Supat, returning from Suz's introducton.

For the next 20 minutes we went over our routine. With the help of a cheat-sheet that Supat had provided, we told out elephants to sit, lie down, pick up the mahout cane and hand it to us, and play musical instruments. We got on our elephants, kicked behind their ears to move them, squeezed with our knees to stop them, and got off again. It wasn't us doing the work of course, the real mahouts were right beside us the whole time whispering the commands in their familiar voices, using words and noises that only them and the elephants shared. But still, it was incredible to speak in such an alien tongue and feel the enormous animal react to it. It had only been a short while, but I just knew she was getting used to me directing her. I could feel the bond of animal and trainer starting to form........

Sensing the routine was over, both elephants suddenly made a quick dash towards the side of the stage. Suz and I both helplessly clung to their heads, taken aback by their sudden decision to do so without any direction.

"How!" I yelled in panic, hitting the elephant on the forehead as I was shown. "How! How!"

The elephant had no intention of stopping whatsoever, and raced over to where Supat had dumped a large bushel of sugar cane on the ground. Some of the other mahouts who were napping in the bleachers suddenly sprang up and started howling. "How! How!" they all shouted, imitating me in between their fits of laughter. "Falang! How!" As my elephant stuffed trunkfuls of sugar cane into her mouth, I could feel the blood ruching to my face in embarrassment. I was stuck there as a spectacle while they ran off to tell their friends. I made a realization as to what my role was at the camp for our time spent there. It wasn't the elephant who was being trained, it was me. Or at the least, tolerated.

After our elephants had eaten, and drank what was probably the equivalent of 4 gallons of water from a spigot in the center of the arena, we slowly lumbered out and past the souvenir shops and restaurants that made up the Center's complex. We were part of a small parade that grew in size as other elephants and their mahouts joined us from different parts of the Center, all headed to the bathing pond for the 9:45 public viewing. I was taking in the absurdity of the whole situation when I looked down and realized my legs were shaking uncontrolably. Sitting spread-eagle across the elephant's huge head, I was exerting muscles that were rarely used, and they were becoming very tired. The other mahouts looked bored as they rode down the concrete path, some squatting or riding sideways in a slouched, effortless balance. I adjusted myself a little, moving back on the neck and letting my legs dangle behind the ears. The elephant didn't seem to mind and I played with a lot of different positions, even sometime putting my feet directly onto the top of it's head. It didn't really matter what I did, I couldn't hurt or even annoy the animal. It was just too big.

The bathing area was a gravel-bottomed, pond with a steep, muddy slope for the elephants to walk down. It was a runoff reservoir, controlled by a dam from the large lake higher up the hill. A small concrete pavilion was set up across from the slope to allow tourists to watch the elephants bathe. Many school kids were there in their colorful uniforms, and they ohhed and ahhed when our parade silently approached from behind them. Our parade congregated to one side of the pond, still waiting for some of the other elephants around the park to join us. Suz's elephant suddenly came under close scrutiny, and Supat asked her to dismount.

"Your elephant has infected sex organ." he said matter-of-factly. "She cannot swim here. You must ride with James."

With a whispered map long from Nut, my elephant laid down and Suz jumped up behind me to sit in the middle of the elephant's back. As soon as we stood back up, elephants beganto descend into the bathing area, pushing past one another as they carefully balanced each food down the muddy slope. Once into the pond, Nut yelled from the shore for me to tell the elphant to lie down.

"Jem! Map long Jem! Map long!"

It took a few tries, but my girl decidely sat down int the chocolate colored water, promptly duming Suzanne right into it's murky depths. As she struggled back aboard, Supat yelled for us to imitate the other mahouts and scrub water over the elephant's head. Looking arouund, we sa 20 others elephants laying in thepond with their trainers walking around on top of them, scubbing away at any spo not submerged. The mahouts wre bone dry, balanced perfectly as they threw water over necks, foreheads, and behind ears, while Suz and I remained seated as best we could, our soaked bodies rubbing water over the few places we could reach. I leaned way forward and rubbed the huge space in between my elephant's eyes. Her trunk emerged ahead of me and let out a low growl, the first encouraging sign I recieved since being paired up with her.

After a few minutes, we all stood up and slowly trundled back to shore. A four year old danced in-between his elders, happily shaking his head and splashing water everywhere with his flailing tunk. Suzanne and I clung like two wet dogs to the neck of my elephant. We had already gotten quite a few laughs from our audience of schoolkids with our performance, and when it began raining on us they erupted into screeching fits. The other mahouts had told their elephants to fill their trunks with water, and we were now being sprayed from all directions. Suz and I giggled and laughed. This was exactly how we had envisioned our time here.

Once Suz had climbed back aboard her elephant, we all lined up on the concrete road from biggest to smallest. The lead elephant held a blue flag in his trunk and began to lead our parade back to the arena for the day's first show. Two elephants behind him held either side of an enormous drum, which the elephant in between them beat with the steady rhythm of the mallet held in her trunk. Tourists lined up on both sides of us, snapping pictures wildly as we slowly marched through the center of the camp and made our tight, half-circle formation inside the arena, which was now packed with groups of color-coded students, tourists, and locals.

When I looked at Suz on my right, she shot me a wide-eyed forced smile that just reeked of panic. I felt much the same way. Other than our 20 minute introduction when we first arrived, we had no idea what we were doing, or even what to expect. Now we were performing our routine in front of an audience. We both nervously held our cheat-sheets in our hands and resigned ourselves to the fact that there was nothing else to do but go along for the ride.

The show began with the loud voice of the narrator over the loudspeaker. She would talk the audience through each step of the show first in Thai, then English. One of the smaller elephants stepped forward, curtsied, then raised a flag to start us off. We first paraded around the front of the audience, each elephant being named, then went back to our semi-circle where everyone raised their trunk and bowed. The elephants then fanned out and made space for each other.

"OK Jem!" Nut whispered from the ground behind me. "Hap song!"

With a lot of coaching from our mahouts, we awkwardly went through our routines. We were the only falang taking the course this day, so we had to move quickly to keep up with the professionals around us. Nut and Tek issued most of the commands for us as we jumped on and off the elephants. After all, it was us who were being trained.

Halfway through the routine, right after a maneuver called the tag long, I heard all the kids in the audience erupt into laughter. The tag long involves a sliding dismount over the forehead and trunk of the elephant while the animal is bowing it's head towards the ground. Once you land, you then make a running leap frog over the elephant's head, back onto the neck, and spin around on it's back while it stands back up. This requires both upper body strength and a reasonable height on the part of the falang attempting it in order to pull it off. Suzanne had neither of these. She had come running at the head of the elephant and simply bounced off it's skull. Tek, trying to keep his giggling stifled, told her to back way up and get a much longer run at it while he commanded the elephant to smoosh it's face into the ground. Suz came running again, and with Tek giving her a boost by her butt, she managed to clear the head by smacking her own into the elephant's neck. The tag long became Suzanne's nemesis for the rest of our training course.

After my routine I was escorted to the side of the stage while my elephant was fitted with chains for the logging demonstration. Suz remained on for her solo performance: a little number where the elephant took one of the mahout's safari hats and gently placed it on her head. They were both supposed to bow at the same time, but Suz missed her que and once again the elephant stole the show. The two of us sat and watched the rest of the performance, sipping on a couple water bottles that Supat had brought us, thinking that we had gotten off the hook for the rest of the show. Suddenly Nut appeared with my elephant again.

"OK Jem!"
"Right. Um....should I just..." I was a little unclear..
"Song soong Jem! Song soong!"

Back on our elephants we had once again formed a half-circle inside the arena. The flag was lowered, and all the elephants made a deep bow. Right when the audience began their applause, my elephant ran straight for the edge of the stage almost throwing me off with her sudden speed. In an attempt to beat the rest of the herd she held her trunk straight out, reaching for the bananas and sugar cane that all the school kids had bought for a chance to be in contact with the show´s main attraction.

For such eternally hungry animals, elephants show a surprising amount of courtesy when eating around one another. They do not fight, push each other, or make aggressive sounds. Their trunks constantly probe each others mouths, but only in an effort to see what the others are chewing on. They instead use sneaky tactics, trying to get as much food as possible for themselves. While the kids were handing out their treats, I found myself constantly being handed segments of sugar cane by the fast moving trunk of my elephant. Each time she received a sugar stick, she passed it up to me to stack in a pile on her head. The bunches of bananas, which were much softer and more quickly swallowed, went right into her mouth. Once it was clear that the audience had moved on and left the arena, she then held her trunk up for me to hand the sugar can back to her, one piece at a time. I was proud of my elephant; with the place she had secured herself at the fence, and her crafty ways, she had reserved more treats than the other elephants around her.

It was break time from our mahout boot camp, and Supat escorted us over to our home stay to clean up. Our clothes were now much soggier, mud covered versions of their former selves, and smelled like the dung carts that were scattered through the park. While we carried our packs down the road, it suddenly occured to me that I didn´t know my elephant´s name.

"Suzanne´s elephant name is Look Kheng", explained Supat, "and yours is named Prachuap, after the province from where she came. She is a very friendly elephant. Her boyfriend is Jojo, one of the larger elephants in the mahout program."

Supat went on to explain that he has been at the Elephant Conservation Center for 7 years, and in that time he could now identify all of the 50 or so elephants from a distance. With his language skills, he had become a sort of unofficial ambassador for the falang who signed up for the program, as the mahouts employed by the center could speak very little English. He wasn´t paid very much, and he only had a couple days off a month, but he loved being around the elephants and found his job very rewarding.

We were greeted at our home-stay by the wife of one of the mahouts. She was in charge of one of the six, six-bedded houses and her and her newlywed husband lived directly behind in a small hut. All of the homestays were run by the mahout wives, and in the two days we spent there we would come to find out that the Center was actually a village; run by all the wives, children, and parents of the staff that worked there. They cooked in the restaurnats, sold souveniers, drove the shuttles, and worked at the elephant dung paper factory, all while raising their children and maintaining their homes built into the surrounding mountainside. After we had showered and changed, we were handed off to another woman up the road who fed us for every meal of our stay. She didn´t speak English but her smile and generosity spoke volumes, and we continuously surprised her by bringing our dishes up to her house when we had finished eating.

After our host handed us a clean pair of mahout clothes, we were back at it for the afternoon elephant bath and show. We performed a little better this round, now knowing what to expect and having studied our commands over lunch. The other mahouts were beginning to warm up to us as well, playing pranks like getting their elephants to fill their trunks with water and aim them directly into my crotch.

Having 50 elephants crates an enormous demand for food, so when it´s all said and done at around 3 p.m. the elephants are put to bed out in the jungle covered mountains that surround the center. There they can strip a whole section of vegetation away and munch to their hearts content. We loaded up our elephants necks with coils of heavy chain, climbed aboard, and headed into the wilderness.

We rode for about 45 minutes of so. Past the offices, past the village huts, up a narrow path and into the thick, ivy covered jungle. The elephants were amazingly sure-footed; able to walk narrow ledges and muddy banks that I would have avoided on my own small feet. The scenery was amazing. The Conservation Center, also responsible for the King´s own elephant stables, had been allocated huge amounts of land that seemed to go on forever from the view atop the mountians. All of it emerald green with dense foliage. I could see why these creatures were so important to Thailand- it was an elephant´s utopia.

Nut jumped off Prachuap at one point to begin looking for a good spot to chain her up for the night. The 100 feet or so would let her roam as much as she wished for food and water, but stop her from wandering aimlessly onto a highway. Nut had to pick his spot carefully. If another elephant had occupied the same site in the last couple weeks, Prachuap´s stay could leave a huge bald spot in the jungle. After 10 minutes he stopped us and guided us down an insanely dense ravine that only an elephant could walk. Already busy grabbing all the leaves around her, Prachuap had no concern for me whatsoever and I was clotheslined by a thicket of bamboo. I jumped off while Nut tied her to the biggest tree he could find. We climbed back up to the muddy path where Tek and Suzanne had tied up Look Kheng, and left the beast until our return at 6:30 the next morning.

On the way back we could hear the happy growls and deep moans of the other elephants in the forest. These were all the show elephants out here; old enough to go through the training, but young enough to be happy about it. The older elephants, those in their 50´s and 60´s, were kept close to the houses of the only people they listened to anymore - their one mahout and none others. They had become mean spirited and aggressive in their old age, and were now assigned to giving rides to tourists who were protected in the baskets on their backs. Twice we stepped out of the road to give there huge elders the respect they demanded. They would lumber past us with their giant bundles of food held in their long tusks, parting the assembly of chickens, dogs, villagters, and motorbikes like a bulldozer in a field of corn.

Other than dinner, our schedule was free for the rest of the day. We once again showered and changed clothes, then focused our attention to studying our commands for our routine the next morning. Supat had suggested that we visit the baby elephant at around 6:00, located in his own pen close to the elephant hospital at the top of the road. While we waited I examined a weeping sore on my foot that had happened during one of my more awkward dismounts. I had removed a bunch of skin from a hard rub across Prachuap´s rough hide. It didn´t seem like much at the time, but for whatever reason it took the damn thing 3 weeks to heal.

At 6:00 we hiked up to the newborn´s pen and were happy to see him become so excited abut our approach. At just 6 months old, he danced around and shook his head wildly, coming straight for us with reckless abandon. Covered in coarse long hair that stuck straight up as if he´d been shocked, he proceeded to climb up on his fense and touch our hands with his soft trunk. His name was A.I., a rather unoriginal name that he was given because of the way in which he was concieved, artificial insemination. A.I. was the first elephant ever to be born by artificial insemination in all of Asia, and he was therefore the pride of the Conservation Center. His mother, perhaps because she didn´t understand how she had become pregnant, didn´t feel the same way as the Center did and refused to care for her baby. A surrogate mother was brought in, and she lovingly encouraged A.I. to nurse whenever he was near.

The mahout who was in charge of the surrogate mother lived in a temporary home wiht his family that had been set up next to the baby´s pen. He emerged from a plastic tarp carrying a huge bottle of warm milk and asked us if we would like to give A.I. his evening meal. The little guys eyes bugged out of his head with excitement and eagerness as we took turns feeding him, only pausing every now and then to burp and breathe. He polished off 3 liters of milk in about 5 minutes. We then bought some corn to feed his surrogate mom, and saved a half a cob for A.I. Not knowing how to eat it without teeth, but refusing to give up, he kicked it around in the mud and tried to pick up the kernels that fell off. We watched his goofyness for awhile, then went back to eat dinner, play cards, and get an early night´s rest.

We awoke at 5:30 a.m., showered, put on a clean pair of mahout clothers, and made the walk up to the food warehouse to meet Tek and Nut. The village was already alive and busy, a small market had been set up on wooden tables selling vegetables and other goods for the day´s meals. Once the guys showed up, groggy but chatty with their neighbors, we grabbed a few long branches of sugarcane from the warehouse and began the long uphill trek back to our elephants. At the top of the mountain, we looked past the tall teak trees and saw the sunrise over the jungles of Thailand. All through the green scenery, elephants were waking up and anxious to join the herd.

Prachuap, much like Look Kheng, had left a complete path of destruction in her 15 hours of solitude. It appeared as if a bulldozer had blazed a trail straight through the area that we had left her in, and you could follow her exact movements during the night. All the vegetation within her trunk´s reach had been stripped. Even worse was the mess she had covered herself in. In an effort to keep the insects off her back, Prachuap had completely covered her back in mud and gravel. As I fed her pieces of sugarcane, Nut had her lie down and began beating her protective coat with powerful, two-handed whacks of his mahout stick. Once he felt he had removed as much as possible, Nut uttered a command and Prachuap stood up and began to pull all 100 feet of her heavy chain out of the jungle with the powerful grasp of her trunk. As each section was thrown to the ground with what appeared to be little effort, Nut coiled them around Prachaup´s neck. Finally ready to go, I song soonged my way up top and handed the rest of the sugarcane to Prachuap´s trunk as we started our walk back.

My elephant was antsy. She constantly kept turning her head from side to side and was making low growls. Everytime Suz and Look Kheng got ahead of us on the trail, Prachuap would hustle past them and begin looking around again.

"Oh yes, she is looking for her boyfriend, Jojo." explained one of the prgram directors when we met her farther down the trail. "She usually spends her nights with him in the jungle, and I think she is looking for him."

Great, my elephant woke up lonely and cranky.

Elephants don´t like other animals, especially dogs. When we make our way past some of the houses close to the village, a pack of local muts began to form and voice their displeasure at our arrival with growls and barks. Nut and Tek, who had been walking behind us, chased them away by tossing rocks and shouting, but it was too late. Prachuap was stopping frequently and moving her head from side to side in an effort to see what was around her. She was definately upset, but I kept encouring her to move and get away from the scene.

Suddenly Prachuap ducked with her head and nearly threw me right off the front. A chicken had tried to cross the road right in front of her feet and she wasn´t having it. Prachuap had made a swipe at it with her trunk and almost thrown me into a tree. It was a harrowing moment, but I had to laugh. An elephant being scared of a chicken was just too absurd.

Suz dropped her elephant and it´s "infected sex organ" off at a stall to get hosed down, but Prachuap was headed to the pond to wash the rest of her gravel blanket off (which I had been sitting on for the last half -hour, rather uncomfortably). Since the elephant had to lie down on it´s side for us to wash it, Suz and I waded waist deep into the water and began rubbing the hard crust off her back. Of course Prachuap decided this was the best time to take a shit, and we found ourselves dodging grapefruit sized balls of dung as we threw handfulls of water around. By the time our sore legs had dragged us back to our home-stay for breakfast, it was 7:30 a.m., and we were soaked, muddy, and smelled like elephant crap.

It was our second shower of the day and another pair of clean mahout clothes when we realized that all we had left of our time at the camp was one bathing session, and one final show. Suz and I quized each other over breakfast on our commands. We were determined to get it right on the final try. We had another 20 minute practice session at 9:00, and we ran over early to see if we could get a few extra minutes in.

Another group of falang had started their course that day, and were going through the brief introduction that we had on our arrival. Supat had already tied a harness onto on elephant for a lady who had fallen off before we got there, even though the elephant was only half the size of Suzanne´s. The spirited director was running between all the new trainees making sure they were happy and smiling, and someone was taking a picture of them while they flailed wildily on the back of something that turned out to be much for difficult than they had expected.

I had planned on enjoying the sight of the new recruits getting soaked in the bathing pond on their first try, but of course Prachuap decided to make our last dip as exciting as possible. Right when we were about to lay her down and start scrubing, another elephant came alongside Jojo and growled in his face. Already upset about her time away from her boyfriend the night before, the apparently aggressive action from the other elephant set Prachuap off. She raised her trunk, stuck out her ears, and let out the long trumpeting noise that we all associate with wild elephants. Prachuap charged the offending member of the herd in a complete rage, growling and running full steam with her mouth wide open. We chased the elephant around the pond as I beat on Prachuap´s head and yelled "How! How!", I noticed all the other mahouts staring with wild eyes and mouths agape. So, this is how it ends, I thought. Caught in the middle of an elephant love-triangle.

Prachuap stopped when she had placed herself between Jojo and the now sheepish-looking offender. Despite all of Nut´s and mine pleading, she refused to lie down in the water and when she finally did it was only for a minute or so. After lining back upon the road, with Prachuap holding Jojo´s tail and flopping her ears happily, the new trainee on Jojo´s back looked back at me. He was an older man from Scotland who had signed up for the 4-day course. He looked nervous, and rode his elephant´s neck uncomfortably with his arms braced against it´s head. "So, does that happen often?" he asked.

I smiled. "Only when someone gets between my elephant and her boyfriend."

Our last show went off without a hitch, and I´m happy to say that both Suz and I went through our routines without any help from our mahouts (except for Suz´s fanny boost during her tag long). I even got a thumbs-up from Nut halfway through the performance. We had actually flown through the performance so quickly that we were dismounted by the side of the stage while many of the new trainees still had their elephants laying down on their sides. After the show, I went over to say goodbye to Nut and Prachuap.

"Mahout Jem!" shouted Nut in his usual booming voice.
"Did I do a good job, Nut?"
"Very good Mahout Jem. Very good."

Nut gave me a firm handshake while Prachuap ate her stash of sugarcane. She had managed to charm one little boy in the audience, and while his mother kept supplying him with bunches of cane, Prachuap was handing them up to me, much to the child´s delight. She really had no interest in my goodbye, but that´s the thing with elephants - it´s all about the food.

30 hours from when we had first stood there, Suz and I were once again on the side of the highway in front of the Conservation center. We flagged down a bus headed to Chiang Mai that turned out to be so crowded that I sat on the edge of a plywood box for the 2 hour ride away from Lampang. Our legs were sore in a way that we hadn´t felt since our hike to Mount Kinabalu, and wouldn´t get better for the next 3 days. But Suz and I couldn´t help but smile at each other while all the other passangers slept around us. Of all the bus rides we had taken through Thailand, it was by far the best stop we had ever made.

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Photos

Happy Couples
Suz, me, Look Kheng, and Prachuap

Bath Time
Scrubbing down my elephant

Sneak Attack
Getting hosed on the way out

The Darker Side of Being a Mahout
Picking up the dung

The Long Walk to Bed
On the trail into the jungle

Green Mountains
Looking out over TECC's land.

Out of the Way
An old elephant and his mahout take some food up the road for the night

Tag Long
Suz gets a boost

The Hat Routine
Look Kheng carefully places the safari hat on Suzie's head

Geb Bon!
Prachuap picks up the mahout stick

Playtime
A young elephant pushes around his trainer.

Our Homestay
Me and a truck full of water bottles out on the patio.

Good Night Prachuap
Nut and I leave the elephant for the night

Feeding Time
Suz gives the bottle to A.I.

Suz and Tek
Tek kept tickiling Suz´s ear with a piece of grass.

Gathering the Chains
Prachuap tosses another length onto the path

Prachuap Calms Down
Suz and I try to get Prachuap to lay down. Suz was standing and jumping up and down on her back.

Comments

[Mom]

All about eating
Loved every word of it!!! Funny how the mahout trainees have a lot in common with their elephants because it is "all about eating.....always!"

[Jen]

IM SO DOING THAT!!!
that sounds amazing! with or without guillaume....im there! thanks for all your helpful info, in your blogs and with the many emails you send after i beg for help. you guys are awesome. xx

[Corina Adams]

Pachyderm Paradise
I am in heaven after that entry! Suz and fuzzy baby A.I. just blew up the cute-o-meter, and thanks for all the laughs this morning. Miss y'all and I'm wishing you well wherever you are. How 'bout them Indians...GO TRIBE GO!!

[tami]

the elephants!
i'm friends with corina and she showed me your blog. the pictures are amazing! i want to feed a baby elephant... i'm very jealous. and the butt boost thing would be a bonus as well... =)