Elephant and his Mahout
We didn’t see any elephants when we were in Burma. Most likely they are all in Thailand carting tourists through the jungle. That’s what I was told when I was carted through the jungle on top of an elephant.
The Thai people love elephants. There are elephant statues everywhere. Their elephants no longer work the teak forests as the Thai forests have been over cut. I saw a magazine article about the terrible straits of elephants used on the beaches of Thailand. The hot sun dries their hide and the hot sands burn their feet and I don’t know what all, but I cannot get the image of elephants with burned feet out of my mind.
My daughter did an essay on elephants when she was in junior high and I learned a lot from her. Elephants have many endearing traits such as caring for a herd member when they are ill and burying them when they die. As if that weren’t enough to make you love them, they can peel a banana with their feet!
When I rode through the jungle, I had to sit on a chair similar to the one on this elephant. At each step, my back hit the back of the chair which was a metal pipe. (My chair was not as nice as the on in the photo above.) I was in agony! But then the mahout jumped down from the elephant and gestured to me to leave the chair and sit behind the elephant’s head. Now that was more like it. The path through the jungle was about 18 inches wide, uphill and downhill, between trees and over streams, over mud slicks and rocks and not once did my elephant stumble. How could he see where he put his feet? That huge body on those huge feet and as nimble as a ballerina. I’ll never forget it.