Luang Prabang....Elephants and Mahouts

Friday morning we got picked up to go on our Elephant Mahout experience, to arrive at a beautiful property with 9 elephants, each with her own Mahout (trainer, owner, best friend). We were a group of 6, a French couple who didn’t want to know us and a nice English couple, Katie and Neil. The first activity was a 1 hour ride sitting in a chair, we were assigned an elephant per couple. Dave and I had a huge elephant call Mae San who was also quite speedy. We went down to the river where the Elephants gently stepped in and walked us to a sand bank. Here Dave moved to Mae San’s neck and the Mahout sat next to me in the chair. Dave and I then swapped and I sat on her neck the whole way home. It was actually less scary sitting on the Elephant than in the chair in which you are perched on unnatural angles to stay on.

We then did Elephant training, where we sat on a naked elephant and used voice commands to direct her. Later we rode them on a walk through the jungle 1 elephant per person to where they sleep, riding on their necks with a Mahout sitting behind us usually singing, sometimes smoking and asking questions.

We stayed the night in a beautiful place next to the river, to be picked up at 6.30am by boat and taken to the jungle to ride the Elephants back to the river. We were all a little nervous as we knew that we would also be washing the elephants that morning and it WAS REALLY COLD. Once we got there and disrobed ourselves of jumpers and jacket, the Elephants started to go crazy, making loud rumbling noise and trumpeting, moving around intertwining trunks - all the while we were on their necks, I was holding onto some course hair and a fold of skin, the Mahout holding onto me.

Into the river we went and the trumpeting stopped. The dunking began, mostly my Elephant who proceeded to the delight of many Mahouts, dunked her whole entire head  and body under, taking me with her too. We when both emerged from the water I had to scrub her head with a brush. Dave’s elephant sucked water in her trunk and squirted it repeatedly. All in all the water was warm is was a brilliant thing to do first thing in the morning. The elephants then took us home and we fed them sugar cane before showering and eating breakfast, still glowing from our River bath.

Our first ride

     Into the river

Off the seat and onto the neck

Resting between elephants

Elephant training - using voice commands only

Washing in the river

The Elephant Spirit lodge that we stayed at