Mahout Suit (by Travis)
Trip Start
Sep 17, 2007
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192
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Trip End
Oct 08, 2008
Lampang,
Thailand
Sunday, June 8, 2008
That is, as soon as I figured out how to put on my pants.
They were hopelessly wide, had drawstrings in the front (or was that back?), and seemed to require some kind of folding. I whispered around the corner. "Erin, how do I put on my pants?"
"I have no idea," she whispered back.
Bubbles
It was going to be a long day.
So, mostly dressed in a very goofy looking blue mahout suit, we walked down to the showground. Each mahout brought up their elephant and we would be matched with one by Supat, the tourist liaison. I shook hands with my mahout and followed him and his elephant out to the showground. I hadn't read the schedule very carefully but I was pretty sure we were going to meet our elephants and then watch the elephant show. The reality turned out to be a little different.
The mahout kicked the elephant's front leg and said something unintelligible. The elephant lifted it's leg. He wanted me to climb the elephant. We were getting straight down to business. The elephant suddenly looked very tall. I placed my foot in the crook of the elephant's leg, hooked my hand around her ear, grabbed a fold of skin near her shoulder, and pushed off. Surprisingly, I didn't end up on the elephant's back. I ended up right back on the ground. Repeat. On the third try I got enough purchase with my foot to scramble up and plant myself on the elephant's head. It wasn't very comfortable at this stage. You sit at the base of the neck with your knees above the elephant's ears.
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It took a little while to get my balance. Dismount was easier. I pretty much fell off. We went through a sequence of other commands. The mahout would say the command and the elephant would usually obey. He went down on his front legs and I jumped off his head. Then I jumped back on (quite a jump as the head is huge). I would drop the elephant prod in front of her trunk and she would pick it up and hand it back to me. Then she lay down like she was sleeping. I put a couple sticks of sugar cane on her leathery tongue. Then I sat on her head as she wandered off and ate...for a long time.Then we did it again. This time I would try to say the commands in the hope that the elephant would understand.
"Song soong," said the mahout and lightly kicked the elephant's leg. She lifted her leg.
"Dong moon," I repeated and kicked the elephant's leg. She pretended I didn't exist. I kicked her leg again, a little harder. The leg remained immobile. It was going to be a long day.
It went on like this for quite a while. I would say gibberish, the elephant would ignore me, and then the mahout would do it the right way. The only noticeable break in the routine was when my pants fell off. My mahout had to pause to show me the proper way to put on my pants. I could imagine what he was thinking.
By the third time around I wasn't any better at getting the elephant to do anything. But I did notice that the mahout wasn't always successful either
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. Sometimes the elephant would purposefully ignore him. At least she seemed to just have trouble with my accent. The third time I tried to jump on her head I didn't have enough energy and pretty much just slammed into her head. Twice. He took pity on my and let me get up the easy way. It's pretty sad that I can run full speed into my elephant's head and she doesn't even seem to notice. After this exercise, the mahout's walked the elephants down the road to the bathing area. We didn't know exactly what was going to happen. But it turned out that we (and the elephants) were going to get a bath. And a bunch of tourists were going to watch us. The bell rang and all the elephants headed for the water. They waded in and then the mahouts told them to sit down. They immersed themselves almost completely and we were supposed to wash them off. Some of the elephants had the talent of squirting water on command. This talent was put to good use. My elephant did not seem to have this ability. That means I was entirely on the receiving end. But it was fun anyway.
Afterwards all the elephants lined up on the road. Two picked up a drum and a third bonged out a regular beat. All the other elephants lined up, grabbed the tail of the elephant in front of them, and marched to the parade ground. To the tourists it must have seemed like we were controlling the elephants. But I knew differently. For all intents and purposes, I was a hood ornament.
It turns out that "watching" the show meant "being in" the show. We all lined up and were introduced, paraded around the grounds, and then were asked to show the tourists how we had trained our elephants
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. So we ran through the procedure again, but this time with an audience. I needed a little help. Okay, I needed a lot of help. But I got through it, and was dropped off with the group to watch the rest of the show. Towards the end, we remounted the elephant and gathered up for the end of the show. The elephants all bow and then the show is over. This is the signal for all the elephants to rush towards the audience to beg for corn and bananas from the audience. They usually get quite a bit. This was one of my favorite parts of the day. I would sit there, an invisible extension of my elephant, and watch the various reactions as Thais and foreigners approached her. After the show it was time for lunch. It had been a very long morning. But it was a pretty good lunch, and pretty good company. We had a little time to relax before doing it all over again in the afternoon. I'm pretty sure it didn't get much easier. It was hard enough to get used to the idea that we were sitting on such an enormous animal. I watched the other tourists looking down, wide-eyed in amazement, at whatever the elephant happened to be doing at the moment. It was just that kind of day. A "wow I'm on an elephant" kind of day.
After another bath, a second show, and another training session, the day was over for the elephants
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. It was time to take them home. We climbed on and cajoled the elephants down the road and up a small dirt track into the forest. It was a beautiful day and the landscape was amazing. Riding an elephant barebacked didn't hurt. It was a slow haul uphill and then the mahout found a patch of grass for his elephant. He took a large chain from his foreleg to a tree. As we left she was already kicking up clods of dirt and throwing it over her back as a form of insect repellent. We walked back. It was 4 o'clock and I was sore and exhausted. We had some free time until dinner and walked down the road to visit the baby elephant. Seven is almost one year old. He comes up to my chest. He was born on 7/7/07, the day we were married. You could say he represents our marriage: wrinkled and a little clumsy.
The little guy is more dangerous than the larger elephants. He doesn't know his own strength. As the director put it, "he give you a friendly hit, he break your rib." His current favorite is to grab your hand with his trunk, drag you bodily over the fence, then try to ran your arm with his head. If he can get your hand to his mouth he'll try to bite. He can also whack you with his trunk. This is hilarious to watch, check out the video of Erin being manhandled by a one-year-old elephant
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.Over dinner we all babbled excitedly over our experiences that day. Supat also came over to tell us a little about the center and answer some questions about our elephants. The Elephant Conservation Center is a much bigger operation than I first thought. They house 70 elephants and have a range of operations throughout Thailand, including elephant rescue teams and an elephant hospital. They even house 7 royal white elephants, all of which belong to the king. The king is a patron of the center, but it seems they have to raise a lot of the money themselves. It costs almost $20 in food per elephant per day. They eat a lot.
My elephant's name in Prachuab (when the Thais say it, it sounds more like "Bajuwup"). She is 30 years old, hasn't had any children, and is named after the province in Thailand where she came from.
As we sit around the table after dark, large flying insects begin to congregate around the light above our heads. They zoom around blindly, running into people. We were talking about how annoying they were when one of the Thai cooks walks by. She sees the insects and scoops down to grab one or two. Then she calls to her friends
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. Suddenly there were a bunch of people running around to gather up the bugs. Everyone was really excited. Apparently they were quite a delicacy...-------
The next morning we arose bright and early, grabbed some stalks of sugar cane, and trekked back into the forest. We had discovered that two members of our group were deathly afraid of snakes, so naturally the mahouts had to throw one off the path right away. We split off to gather up our elephants. Prachuab had come up to the path to meet us, which meant the mahout had to get her to back down the path to untie the chain. I'm pretty sure Prachuab only pays attention to me when I'm holding something to eat. We had to brush off the caked dirt on the elephant's back from the night before. The hide is so tough that the mahout could use the blade of a machete to chip off the dirt. Then we all filed down the mountain. It was a little muddy and at one point Prachuab stopped walking and started sliding down the hill. This was a little unnerving but it turned out that she wasn't slipping, she was just amusing herself. We went down for a cold morning bath. Anthony, riding Jojo, threw his shoes off before getting in the water. He was quite surprised when, after getting out of the water, Jojo picked up his shoes and handed them to him without a word from anyone
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. Then back to breakfast.It was quite interesting to observe the relationship between elephant and mahout. Elephants bonded principally with one mahout. There was also a secondary mahout in case of emergency. The primary worked with the elephant for 26 days of the month, the secondary for four. Usually, the elephant went through two mahouts in its lifetime (over 50 years). My mahout was younger than most of the others, and slightly more reserved at first. But his dialogue with the elephant is continuous. They talk together. He will chatter happily to the elephant when she is obedient, and cajole, plead, and finally yell when she is not. The latter isn't pleasant from the top of an elephant. If the mahout threatens Prachuab, she usually spins around as if to turn her back on him, and I have to be prepared. I feel almost like I'm coming in between a man and a woman... which I suppose I am. A love triangle with two men and a female elephant.
The morning show on the second day wasn't much better than the first day, but my mahout did let me participate in the second part of the show, where Prachuab demonstrates how elephants drag logs. It wasn't until the second show that afternoon when things began to click. Slowly it dawned on me that the elephant was, more or less, responding to my commands. I still occasionally needed help remembering what they were, but things seemed to be working out. I was much more comfortable on my elephant. She seemed more like a person than a giant creature. I fed her big stalks of sugar cane. One to her trunk, one to her mouth. The third one I put behind my back. She gently lifted her massive trunk up over my head and plucked it from my grasp. Things were looking up. I ended the second day very sore but happy
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. The last day I got a curve ball. My mahout went off duty and I switched over to another one. I wasn't sure how Prachuab was going to react to this change. In fact, she was fine until we started going down hill. Jojo, the stud on the ranch and her love interest, was walking in front. There were a couple places where the path diverged and then met up again. Prachuab waited until Jojo took one fork, then ran down the other to cut off Jojo and interrupt the march. She and Jojo would then stick their trunks in each other's mouths. She did this three times. She was acting like a little girl. After the bath she and Jojo raced home, quite a change from the usual plodding pace. It was an interesting day.
My new mahout was much more hands off than any of the others. He sent me into the water along on my elephant, which was a little bit of a surprise. I was the only one with this dubious honor. But during the final show he stepped back and disappeared. And I ran through the whole set of commands. Prachuab responded obediently to my voice. I completed the entire thing without a mistake. Prachuab and I were a team.
As with most things, by the time you figure it out it's time to go. This leavetaking was harder than most. For three days we had lived and worked with the mahouts and their elephants. For a short time they had been our elephants. Yet it was time to say goodbye.
I hope to come back to the center some day to visit Prachuab and maybe train with her again
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. This experience has been one of the most unique and amazing of this trip. A highlight of highlights. And every animal lover should put this trip on their list. Come out here and see for yourself. www.changthai.com.In case you every run into a trained, Thai speaking elephant, here are the commands:
song soong- mount
hup soong- dismount
tag long- overhead dismount
loog khen- stand up
bai- go
phae- come
goy- slow down
how- stop
nung long- sit down
non long- lie down
map long- sit on belly
benn- turn
sok- back up
geb bon- pick up
~Travis
