Finally... the elephants

As I'm about to retire another notebook, I decided it was time to finally finish writing about my travels this summer. It's been a long time coming -- a little bit of the albatross on my shoulder -- but here it is.

This was more on the beginning end of our trip in Laos and we saw and experienced much more after this (probably accurately summed up as buddhas, stupas, fruit shakes and massages) but this remains the closest to my heart.

As most people who know me are aware, I've always liked animals. Dogs, monkeys, zebras, giraffes, lionstigersandbearsohmy. On this trip, however, I (re)discovered a deep, inner love for elephants.

Walking down the main tourist street of Luang Prabang on one of our first days in Laos, we spotted a sign for something called the Elephant Park Project. A few days later, we embarked on our excursion to "live like a mahout".

Move up, move up, closer to her head, my mahout gestured. I wriggled myself forward and brought my knees up, tucking them behind her wide, flapping ears. As we swayed from side to side, she folded her ears back, holding my knees snugly in place. Cozy, I thought. As we trekked through the grass, I rubbed the top of her head with its sparse but coarse black hairs. I held on as she leaned forward to grab a shrub or a bush with her trunk. Always snacking, these elephants are. Sometimes uprooting entire plants, leaving a gaping hole in the ground. Watch your step!

When they open their mouths, you can't help but think they look like they're smiling. I tore a couple bananas off the bunch and lay them on her trunk. She tossed them in. Chomp, chomp. "Ok, I'm ready again." She unfurled her empty trunk expectantly. One, two... she continued to wait. Ok fine, three, four. "Eat those, first," I told her. She indulged me, but I could't help but feel like she was thinking, "Silly person."

Over the afternoon and early next morning that we spent with the elephants, we fed them bananas and pineapples, we walked with them along the water, through the water, and into the jungle where they spent the night, and I fell utterly and completely in love. They're simply amazing. Every part of them. Their trunks, slurping up water like a straw and then squirting it into their mouths; their tails, with their long black hairs that look almost like feather; their big, thick, round feet with the rounded toenails and wrinkly bottoms.

The mahout tried to show me up how to climb up on her with a hop, skip and a jump. When he does it, it looks so easy. One, two, up. One hand holding onto her ear, then stepping onto the leg she's raised to help him up. Alas, I'm not quite so graceful. Even when she was sitting down, my ascent was not so pretty to look at.

When we met them in the jungle in the morning, our dear friends were covered -- absolutely caked -- in mud. It had rained hard the night before and clearly they had decided to have a little party of rolling in the mud. Who can blame them? They knew they'd have a bath in the morning anyways...

As we reached the river for said bath, the elephants opened their mouths and seemed to grin. My mahout and I were armed with a long handled brush and a metal basin but I wasn't all too clear how this 'bath' was going to go down. I soon found out. Splosh, splosh, splosh, in she went. As she got settled in the river, the mahout shouted an order and the next instant, she was sitting. He handed me the brush and pointed at her head. I scrubbed. We traded and I poured basins and basins of water on us, trying to rid her of the brown tinge. Limited luck. As I scrubbed away, I felt her weight shift. Oh no... tell me she doesn't want to roll around in the cool, brown water. I envisioned myself squashed like a pancake by a bathing elephant. The mahout steadied her though snd she resisted the temptation. Much scrubbing and rinsing later, we emerged, slightly less muddy, considerably more wet but altogether a happy crew. Oh yeah... elephants are the best.