Bold on our bucket list was a mahout training in one of the elephant camps surrounding Chiang Mai. Those trainings are far from being cheap, but it was again worth the extra spending. We went to a camp just by the road 60km outside Chiang Mai. When I first saw the camp I started to question our decision, since it looked really run down and unprofessional. However, do not judge by appearance and it turned out to be a small, nice, very local camp.
We already learnt some basic commandos at the office in Chiang Mai and soon climbed up an elephant to exercise. Sitting on an elephant without a seat or rope to hold on is exciting. Especially as you sit quite high up and the elephant shakes his head and his ears all the time. Our guide ensured us that nobody ever fell of an elephant. Few minutes later a fellow trainee stumbled while climbing down and fell into elephant dung… In the afternoon we could ride some more, feed them more bananas and bathe the elephants. To bathe them you ride into one of the dirtiest rivers I ever saw and then the elephant has to sit and lay down. My elephant choose to bend his head instead of his butt first and I just flew headfirst into the river. Michi still bursts out laughing when remembering my graceful decent. The bathing was really fun; some elephants love the water and try to dive by pulling their head under water, others just want to get washed.
We spent the night with the mahouts in their little settlement. The night before a storm cut the power and water lines, so that we were out of both. The mahouts have to stay near their elephants among others because they have to feed them all the times. When not carrying some tourists around a mahout is mainly occupied by gathering food for the elephant. Most of the mahouts are from the Karen tribe, many born in Burma. Their English is quite limited so that having a conversation is sometimes difficult (soon we will learn, not as difficult as with the tribes in Laos). Nevertheless, we had a pleasant evening sitting around candles, observing the elephants and watching the mahouts drinking cheap Thai whiskey.
The next morning we had to clean the floor and to bath the elephants again. Somehow the elephants felt itchy and stopped at nearly every tree to scratch them. It became clear that despite our intense training, the elephants did not obey us at all. It was more like sitting on a huge, friendly, hairy donkey. It just does what it wants until its mahout steps in. Usually, every mahout has its own elephant and earlier they spent their whole life together. Nowadays being a mahout seems to be a good place for Karen people to learn English and get a foot into the tourist industry before moving on after a few years.
Anyhow, a new mahout needs to be at least six months with its elephant until the elephant starts to obey. Our two days course was definitely not enough. Nevertheless, we were now assigned to guide our first tourists as mahouts. It was pretty funny when the guide explained the tourists, who booked an elephant ride, that we were mahouts in training, taking care of them today. They were really impressed, even asked questions about our intense, long training. We had to tell them that the guy walking next to us is the real mahout and that we were actually just another tourist sitting on the elephant.
The last part of our trip was an elephant free bamboo rafting. We teamed up with another group and waited for our guides somewhere in the forest. The set up looked very touristy and we were not so keen to be shipped down the river with hundreds of other tourists. Surprisingly the yelling other tourists were Thais and that the ride became one of our funniest and interesting Thai culture insights.
Being on or next a river seems to be their Sunday entertainment; they buy loads of food and alcohol, rent a raft, swim and slide down the river. Part of the fun is splashing other passengers or doing silly moves on the raft. All in all it was a big party on the river with tons of drunken Thais.
After the rafting we drove back to Chiang Mai. The elephant camp was clearly one of our highlights and working with these friendly, hoggish giants is clearly an unforgettable experience.
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