A Day In The Life of a Mahout
Trip Start
Jul 09, 2008
1
11
12
Trip End
Aug 19, 2008
Lamphun,
Thailand
Sunday, July 20, 2008
don't exactly function as they do in cartoons. He thought when the sun
rises a rooster greets it with a cock-a-doodle-doo (or keek-er-ee-kee,
if you're like our European friends), and that was it. So imagine his
surprise when the entire fleet of roosters at the Conservancy began
calling at 4:30 in the morning and continued to do so well past
breakfast. Never mind the tossing and turning, as we were out of bed by
6 a.m. anyway and began the hike up the hill to greet our elephants.
True, the walk into the forest was long and uphill, but the misty
forests and the hills were quite beautiful in the morning, and our
elephants seemed grateful when we returned with our mahouts bearing
sugarcane and brushing the enormous amount of dirt they had accumulated
rolling around the forest the previous night.
We saddled back up and as a unit rode them down the hill to this
new pond where we had never been before. The elephants were extra dirty
and so the mahouts took extra care to order them to dip repeatedly, the
result was a very wet and refreshing wake-up for all of the
mahouts-in-training as well. After getting the elephants back to the
training ground, we changed into fresh, equally-huge skivvies and
settled down for our first breakfast of the entire trip (that's what
college will do to you). We met up more formally with the large unit of
Aussies who had arrived the previous evening as they prepared for their
two-day Mahout course. There was a young pair traveling as friends like
us and a family of five, making us a group of 10 now with John the
Professor included.
Day 2 training was a refining of the techniques we had learned the
previous day plus trying out some new orders like "turn," "walk
backwards" and "stop." Though these may seem like simpler orders than
yesterday they are used more often in riding and not part of the show,
and the elephant requires more trust in his owners to actually obey
these commands. Due to the large crowds, it being a Sunday and a
holiday (Buddhist Lent), we actually performed three shows (!) today.
Two before lunch and one after, and the elephants weren't the only ones
who were tired by the time we had saddled them back in the forest in
the afternoon. Our legs were sore like we had been riding horses
bareback all day (which essentially we had).
When we got back, Susan elected to take a well-deserved cat nap
while Nick, John, and the two young Aussies had some pre-dinner beers
and talked on a variety of issues (mostly the typical, "your country
does THIS, my country does THAT" type of thing). Beers before dinner
lead to beers at dinner and soon Nick was involved in an intense
discussion with the two aforementioned men on the hardships and issues
of the Australian army.
So that everyone else didn't die of immense boredom Susan
introduced the game of Spoons to the rest of the Aussies. They caught
on quick and fell in love with the game and soon everyone (with the
exception of Nick, busy with the camera) was involved in repeated
exciting games of Spoons. Quick to extend our merriment to others, we
decided to try and teach the game to Susan and John's mahouts, who were
hanging out nearby. As it turned out, they were familiar with the game
as both of they introduced variations of our game, continually tricked
and outsmarted the rest of us, and between them won every single game
the rest of the night (even when Susan won, her mahout realized it
before she did and grabbed the winning Spoon).
The merrymaking went on so long, that we actually stayed up until
10 pm this night(!), being a mahout is doggone tiring. As Susan went to
bed dreaming of waking Wanalee with fresh stalks of sugar cane, Nick
was engaged in sleeping as deep as possible before those roosters could
wake him at the crack of dawn.
