Mahout Training

An elephant has to be one of the smartest and sweetest creatures on earth, capable of learning over a hundred commands from their mahouts. Ma'hout is the Indian word for an elephant rider, trainer or keeper. Better known as an elephant's best friend. Some mahouts can stay with the same elephant for the whole life of the animal. And since elephants have the same life span as humans and they can live 70 to 80 years, the animals are passed down from generation to generation.

Upon arriving at the Tented Camp, we were greeted by a rather large living work of art. Yuki, a 27 year old retired Coca-cola star, had "Congratulations Newlyweds" painted on her side and with her trunk presented me with a bouquet of Thai roses. What a way to start this amazing trip! For the next 2 days, Jason and I got to know Yuki and Bounma, two sweethearts that eased us into our elephant training experience. We put on traditional Thai garb, those sexy blue jean outfits that you can see in the pictures, and started learning commands. The first and most important, "How!" STOP! If we knew nothing else we knew to say "how" and squeeze our knees together on the elephants shoulders. Next, we learned the commands to give on how to get on and off of the elephant. Imagine an 8000 pound animal gently sitting on the ground and stretching her leg out for us to climb aboard her back. It was one of the coolest things we have ever seen. "Map Long" means to sit down and "Tag Long" means to lower your head. The rider literally faces the elephant head on, places both hands on the ears and jumps up onto the elephant's neck. At this point you are sitting backwards on the elephant and after it stands up you have to figure out a way to scramble around and face forward. Jason quickly found this as his favorite way to get on these gentle giants (picture below). "Pai" means go forward and "Baen" means turn. Very quickly we started trekking up the side of the mountain on our two elephants practicing these commands. Jason found himself saying Baen a whole lot more as he learned old Bounma loved to eat the bamboo along the trails. Yuki and I had to keep slowing down to wait for them to catch up. Sweet Bounma, a 55 year old female, had the scars to show that she had not always had the easiest life. She is now a part of the camp's rescue program and lives a much better life than her early years of working for a logging company. Jason fell in love. Yuki, the leader of the pack is by far the largest elephant at the camp. And they put me on her! Imagine that! We quickly made best friends with these two girls and spent the next two days exploring the Thai mountains on their backs.    

When our guide, Somkid, thought we were proficient enough in our commands we planned our next excursion. On Wednesday morning, we met Yuki and Bounma at 5:45 a.m., fed them about 200 pounds of bananas and started up to the top of the mountain. An hour later, we found ourselves enjoying a sunrise breakfast atop the mountain. From the peak, we were able to see where the Mekong River divides the three countries into the Golden Triangle. As we stood in Thailand, to our left was Burma and to our right was Laos. What an amazing sight. The sweetest sight of all was Yuki with her head down, resting her trunk on the floor by our table begging for more fruit. We will never look at elephants or a sunrise breakfast the same. What an amazing way to appreciate all of God's creations!