Tuesday, December 15, 2015

It’s a short drive from our lovely hotel in Lampang to the Thai Elephant Sanctuary (TECC). When we passed under the arch announcing our arrival, it became clear we had entered the world of elephants—domesticated ones.

TECC is a government-supported organization that helps foster awareness of the Asian elephant in Thailand. They offer a program that we will be participating in called a “home stay” in which simple lodging and food is provided, as well as intimate experiences with the elephants and their mahouts. We will actually accompany the mahouts in their daily routine over the next four days.

We each are assigned an elephant and the elephant’s mahout. I have the good fortune of being assigned a 22 year-old girl named Prathida, Did you get a chance to watch the 8 minute YouTube video of the young elephant dancing to Jami Sieber’s cello music? That elephant was Prathida as a seven-year-old. Prathida means Princess. She was adopted by the the princess of Thailand. Her mahout is John, a mischievous young man who loves to laugh and make jokes. Prathida adores him.

December 20, 2015

Did you wonder if I took off with my gorgeous elephant, Prathida, into the forest, never to be heard from again? The six day silence has been due to technical difficulties, not only with finding reliable internet access, but also because my Word Press blog host has informed me that I have no more space on the site for any more pictures. I’m counting on finding a solution to this problem because the pictures tell a most amazing—almost mystical—story that cannot possibly be described adequately in words.

This magical experience of living in close contact with each of our elephants and tasting the life of the mahout, has been a trip of a lifetime. Imagine getting up before the sun, and walking in the cool dawn with your mahout into the forest to retrieve your elephant where he or she has spent the night eating about 500 pounds of various plants, sleeping for about four hours (like me!!) and making all sorts of elephant sounds, including trumpeting, in conversation with nearby buddies. And imagine climbing up onto your three-meter-high elephant and sitting right behind her ears and walking back through the forest with a slow, swaying gait, stopping on the way at a lake to take your elephant for a refreshing dip and chance to rinse off the dirt and grime—and a chance to see their sense of humor at play as they spray water at us, leaving us soaking wet in our mahout outfits. Then you spend the day with your elephant learning all sort of things about their world, including the commands the mahouts use to have the elephants do certain maneuvers.

Riding through the forest, seated snugly behind the head of your elephant, feels primordial, like riding a mastodon—which are actually related to the Asian elephants. Although these elephants in the Conservation Center have been domesticated, they still have the wildness in their DNA.

I’m determined to get some of the awe-inspiring photographs to you one way or another. They are too special to simply keep for myself alone.

I will end this disappointing post with the one and only photo I was able to upload onto the blogsite, even though it’s nothing much.

Your determined and disappointed reporter,

Erica