Dan's Adventure

“Pai, Pai” I shouted as my elephant lowered her head and started munching on some trees, the command of keep walking was useless, she interpreted it as keep on eating. “Pai, Pai” shouted the mahout who was walking alongside. She diligently stopped eating and continued along the track into the jungle. I tried out other commands, I told her to go left, I told her to go right and eventually I gave in and just told her to keep on eating, that was the only one that had any effect.

I was on a two day mahout course at All Lao Elephant Camp, a short distance from Luang Prabang. Over the two days our group of 12 would learn verbal and physical commands for instructing elephants, ride them as mahouts do (on their necks without seats), wash them in the river, take them into the jungle to eat and take them further into the jungle at night to their “beds”. The elephants have all either been retired from logging or rescued from the wild and are instead being put to work in the less demanding tourist industry where the income they generate is used to take care of them and help to rescue more elephants.

Sitting ten feet high on the elephant’s neck was frightening at times. When going down steep parts I felt like I was going to fall over her head and when going uphill it was difficult not to slip backwards. Still, it was more comfortable than sitting on the wooden park bench that had previously been attached to her back for elephant rides.

Our guide provided us with a lesson in verbal commands. We each repeated and repeated until the tone and pronunciation was correct and then we set off to try them out on the elephants. For a couple of hours we all tried but slowly grew tired of being ignored. The elephants were all hungry and nothing was going to stop them from eating anything that looked good.

Elephants smell bad. Almost as bad as camels. As we walked they constantly farted with the sickening smell making everyone behind retch. Elephants can definitely multi-task. Walking, eating and shiting all at once comes naturally to elephants.

We rode the elephants down into the river where they dropped to their knees and started spraying water over themselves as we assisted by pouring buckets of water over their backs. Soaked, we continued into the jungle where we proceeded to the elephants bed area. At night the elephants are chained by their ankles to stop them from wandering off.

The following morning we collected the elephants from their night spot and walked them back towards the river, stopping for a spot of breakfast on the way. Once they had been fed we once again took them for a wash. It was so cold that only two of our group decided to brave the water. The rest of us had taken one look at our still wet uniforms from the previous day and decided against it. By 9am we were done. It was time for our breakfast.