An elephant never forgets

On our third day in Luang Prabang, we had made reservations with Elephant Village for a 2 day mahout experience. During this time we were able to learn the ropes of "steering" the elephants, ride them, bathe them, and basically just stare in awe at these awesome creatures. And don't forget I still have pink eye. Doesn't matter we were both just too excited for our next couple of days. When we arrived it was everything I was hoping for! Elephants were walking around, eating and carrying visitors. We first took a boat up the river to our cabins. These rooms were gorgeous! After unloading all our gear it was elephant time! We learned how to approach an elephant (always from the right, as some are trained to attack anyone coming from the left). We also learned the commands to go, stop, turn right, left and how to get on an elephant. It is not as graceful as it seems. Your grab their ear firmly (even though you think you hurting them) then you give the command for the elephant to lift and bend her right leg. You then step on the knee and launch yourself up. Once you are up you sit on the neck, with your knees resting on the ears and you are really close to sitting one their head. If you do not sit like this your bounce around on their shoulder blades. It is a much smoother ride on the neck. Now once you are ready you can say, "Pie" which means go. You need to say it loud and more then once since you are not the elephants mahout it is less likely to listen to you the first time. We got to ride around on the elephant for a couple minutes to get the hang of it. After we each got a turn we got to go for an hour long trek in the jungle, the river and back through a small village for the elephants daily exercise. The elephants mahout rode on her neck and we were in seats on the back. About halfway he switched places with Carrie and she got to ride on the neck. After lunch we watched another group give the elephants their afternoon bath before we got to take them into the jungle away from the camp for the night.
The next morning we woke up early to get ready to get our elephants and take them for their morning bath. We walked through the jungle - uphill most of the way of course, sweating and panting for 45 minutes or so. We reached the area where we were to ride the elephants down. Again, mounting these large, ancient animals is no easy task and surprisingly we are no more graceful at it. Once on, you can't imagine a cooler feeling to be doing first thing in the morning. The mahouts are having a great time singing laughing and basically trying to get the elephants to run and pass each other.


At the shore of the river, the elephants stepped in and took long drinks of water. Then they go further in the water with you still on their backs. They like to play and completely submerge in the water, so there is no way you're not getting wet. Not all fun and games though, we had to do our jobs to scrub the elephants neck and backs. Feeling their rough, wrinkled, thick skin under you is so surreal.




As our time with the elephants came to a close, we said goodbye to our new elephant friends and took some last photos. An experience we will definitely not soon be forgetting.