I have often thought that it might be a bit presumptuous to call our trip an adventure. After all, we stay in decent accommodations, we can afford to fly from place to place and with easy access to the internet, there are very few surprises.
At least, that is what I thought. We decided to spend today at an elephant park. The park is dedicated to providing abused and rescued elephants with a high quality of life. Visitors are given an opportunity to learn how to care for elephants, ride them bareback with basic directions (in Thai and Burmese) and feed and bathe them. Essentially, each participant is trained to be a mahout (a person who is the elephant’s caregiver). Have a look at the video posted on the Thailand page – that will give you a sense of what we were up to. We spent the morning learning all of the skills. So far, so good. After enjoying another fine Thai lunch we were told that the real mahouts were going to have their lunch and that we could watch the elephants but we shouldn’t get too close. Apparently, not everyone was listening. Some people need to learn things the hard way. Char and I were observing a couple of elephants enjoy their lunch when suddenly we heard yelling and screaming and all of the real mahouts running towards a particular elephant. A young woman had strayed too close to a large female. The elephant had grabbed the women around the waist with its trunk and had thrown her down and pinned her to the ground with one of its short tusks (Asian female elephants have short tusks – we learned that in the morning). The shouting mahouts quickly rescued the woman, who was able to walk away. Char noticed that the woman was bleeding quite a bit from her right ear and, being a nurse, rushed to comfort her and provide first aid. I, being a labour lawyer on the management side, immediately rushed to the supervisor to caution him not to say anything. Actually, the part about Char is true. I just sat back and watched. It seems that my skill set isn’t necessarily suited to dramatic interventions. Anyway, the woman had a large laceration behind her right ear and was in a slight state of shock. She acknowledged the she got too close (obviously, I should have told her not to make such admissions but, like I noted, I have a management bias). Char recommended she be taken to the hospital to have the wound cleaned as she definitely needed stitches. After that, we were ready to ride these animals bareback on our trek. Hmmmm, I sensed our enthusiasm waning. We were told elephants are moody like people. The elephant in question would not have acted that way had its regular mahout been nearby. That is why we were told to keep our distance. In any event, we had paid for the excursion and, dangerous or not, we were prepared to press on. Riding an elephant bareback is not as glamorous as it looks. But, we survived and the highlight of the day was bathing our elephant in a muddy pool (don’t worry - elephant dung floats so there is no risk of stepping in it). We left with a much greater respect for the majestic creatures, cognizant of the fact that while they were not ‘wild elephants’ they were certainly not pets. Tomorrow we have a Thai cooking class booked. I hear a kitchen can be a dangerous place . . . Comments are closed.
|
AuthorIn January, 2012, Curt and Char left their jobs in Canada to spend four months travelling around the world. Archives
May 2012
|