Dancing in the Rain with Elephants

Hands down, best day of my life by far was spent with one of the largest animals in the world, the Indian elephant. I had been backpacking from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Chiang Mai, Thailand with my best friend: my darling mother. Chiang Mai was the last stop on our adventure and I had been looking forward to my day with the elephants.

Chiang Mai is incredibly touristy there is no doubt about it and about 90% of the elephant events involve gimmicky shows where you watch elephants doing tricks and painting pictures for an audience. I had seen elephants in the wild before and the idea of watching one of these elephant shows did not appeal to me at all. Elephants are in my opinion one of the world's most majestic creatures. I have had this fascination with elephants ever since I was a little girl and when I learned there was a place where you learnt to be a mahout and ride an elephant for the day I had to go.
We were picked up from our hotel early in the morning by a shuttle from the park and driven to the  Baan Chang Elephant park. When you finally turn off the "main road" the van starts winding through the most beautiful fields with an idyllic mountain view surrounding you, taking you to the gorgeous elephant sanctuary. (All of the elephants are adopted or rescued from horrendous conditions and given a magical home.Which makes the experience all the more special as many of the elephants are related and you can see how happy they all are together.).

They debriefed the small group of us  on the rules before being given our blue mahout outfits to change into for the day. Dressed for success we learnt the basic commands we would need to communicate with our elephant, telling them to turn left, right, go forwards, backwards, stop, and to kneel. Once everyone in the group had the commands down it was finally time to meet the elephants. Approaching the gentle giants with gifts of bananas we had quickly made new friends. The instructor even let us meet some of the baby elephants bringing them around to give us "kisses" on the cheek with their snouts. Rubbing the elephants behind the ears and on their backs your hands were met with incredibly rough skin, which was obviously meant to be very tough.

After our meet and greet it was finally time to practice our commands. The first and most important command we learned was to lift knee high (song soong). You would prop one leg on the elephants leg so when it lifted its leg you could use it to jump onto its back positioning yourself carefully on its shoulder blades very close to its head. Once we all managed to mount our elephants we then had to learn how to steer them. "Pai" means go forwards and "How" means stop. These commands were worthless on their own but when used in conjunction with the physical commands the elephants were moving around in no time. (Because the elephants skin is so tough you have to squeeze super tight with your legs to make them stop, making for quite a funny scene as people got going quickly but had trouble stopping, shouting "HOW" a million times as they squeezed away with their legs.) Turning was simple enough and  we were all soon navigating a simple path to show off our newly acquired skills.

We took a break for lunch after our lesson, enjoying a fabulous local meal prepared by the school before finally embarking on the real adventure. You are paired up two people to an elephant. My mum and I were assigned to Bua Tong a large gentle female who was incredibly sweet and fortunately for us not quite as peckish as some of the other elephants on the trek. We began our journey up a pathway into the jungle. It was the most magical feeling, riding bare-back on an elephant through a tropical jungle in Thailand as the rain began to slowly trickle through the canopy. Some of the elephants stopped for a tasty tree branch along the way but Bua Tong kept going, marching along steadily with the group. The trip is broken up into two parts and is separated by a water break where you trade places with your partner. The first half is the easier half as it is on a gradual up hill path so my mum decided she would take the first leg.
                                 Click on this to watch a short clip of us riding through the jungle

After a short water break where we enjoyed a few small nibbles it was time to jump on Bua Tong's back for the second half of the journey. The second leg was mostly down hill and after some time we eventually left the path. The second we stepped off the path the rain began to pick up. By the time we had made our way down a slippery slope and were turning to walk back across the level plain towards the school the skies had opened up and the refreshing Thai rain was pouring down us. It was the perfect moment when you realize the true magic of riding an elephant through the jungle with warm rain pouring down and you can not help but smile and bask in the glory of the adventure. Yet just when I thought it couldn't get any better we made it back to the Baan Chang Elephant Park and it was time for a bath.

Arriving back at the park we hopped off our new found friends and took them into a nearby body of water for a bath. As we were already soaked to the bone walking into the water, scrubbing brushes in hand, did not phase us. With brushes as brittle as the elephants skin is rough we scrubbed down the darling creatures making sure to clean behind their ears. Standing beside Bua Tong, washing her sides, our feet began to disappear into the muddy earth below so we hopped on her back to finish scrubbing the top of her head and her back. To say elephants love the water is a total understatement. This was clearly a fabulous treat for all of the elephants who looked like they had died and gone to heaven being scrubbed away in this muddy pool. (To be fair the same could have been said for all the people giving their elephants a bath.) Elephants and people alike there was not a frown in sight. It had been a truly fabulous day and leaving my new best friend was incredibly hard. After saying our final goodbyes we showered up and changed into our clean clothes to take the shuttle out of this majestic place and head back to our hotel. 

This experience was 100% worth every penny and I hope to do the three day adventure one day. If you ever find yourself in Thailand be sure to make the journey to Baan Chang for this unforgettable experience.