Today was my last day at the Thai Elephant Conservatory. I spent the last three days there in their Mahout Training Class. The Conservatory is a government sponsored Center that holds donated Elephants, treats sick Elephants for free, and puts on Shows and Classes for curious tourists such as myself. Laurence and I took the three day class there and it was a blast. Each person gets their own elephant for the entire time. You are accompanied by a real Mahout, who is a essential the guardian of each Elephant. You get to bath the elephants, feed them, ride them in the shows, and then take them through the forest at night.The class was fun but they definitely dont coddle you when it comes to the course. They throw you right in the mix. When we got there they lead the elephant to you, which is a pretty intimdating experience to have a 10-foot, 4,000 kg elephant walk directly at you. Then before you really even learn its name they tell you top get on it. Before you even have a chance to look it over and touch it, you are climbing on top of it. The way you get on an elephant is kick its leg above its knee so it raises its leg, and then grab its ear and extra skin behind its front leg and pulling yourself over it. I thought I was gonna rip its ear off the first time I tried it. It all got easier as the trip went on and you realize you cant hurt an elephant. As proof, the way the Mahouts would discipline the elephants was by using a stick with what looked like a metal pick on the end. It's really the only way to get an elephants attention.
The elephants while very powerful proved to be very gentle. I really didnt feel unsafe or in danger at any point along the way.
On the first day, after we had maybe 30 minutes of instruction on the first day, they had us riding the elephants in each show. I thought that was pretty funny, how we got to pretend like we were controlling them even though they were all on cruise control. They went completely on memory.
Above and below that is me with Jo-Jo. Jo-Jo means Mo-Jo which was very appropriate for him. He was the biggest Elephant they had and did pretty much whatever he wanted. He was the Alpha Male and was the lead of the show, so he was a natural fit for me : ). He got to Lead the show by carrying the flag, ring the opening bell and do the Log Walking trick as seen below. All of them were a big hit. He had several 'girlfriend' elephants as my Mahout said and had to always be first in line.
I really was impressed with how flexible and nimble they seemed. The elephants could walk down a narrow path and go down extremely steep slopes with no problems. Riding an elephant was a good time but is definitely not the most luxurious way to travel. I have never ridden a horse or anything else so my experience was limited. But I challenge anyone to try and ride an elephant for a several hours and not have to pop a couple of Ibuprofen. I eventually got use to it but I couldnt imagine traveling any kind of long distance on one of them.A tired Laurence below.
Us bathing the elephants below. We bathed them about 4 times a day so the elephants never smelled. But the water we did it in was about 10% Elephant Crap by the end of every day. We showered every break we had.
Why I dont own an elephant.
