Who among us is so small as to not love an Elephant?

From Bangkok I flew to Chiang Mai, the capital of Thailand’s northwest region and launching site for treks into the hill country. The treks go by truck and then foot to visit Thailand’s remote hill people – ethnically and culturally separate tribes that eek out a primitive subsistence in much the same way their ancestors did. At least that is the way it is billed. Of course it ends up being a nice demonstration of Heizenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – observing a phenomenon irreparably alters it. Though there are a lot of these hill villages there are even more tour groups traipsing through them. Just seeing the alien foreigners decked out by LL Beans must have an impact. And they have gotten very adept at separating tourists from their dollars (or Thai Bhat, as the case may be). The villages are now able to afford a few televisions (powered by solar cells) and you wonder how longer any native culture can survive weekly viewings of Desperate Housewives. They are also starting to buy motor scooters and other accoutrements of civilization, and the kids are moving off to the cities. I’m told there are even more remote villages you can find further up in Burma or Laos, but basically if you care to see one you best helicopter in next week since there will be a McDonalds moving in the week after.

I did a two day trek – several hours of hiking each way with an overnight stay in one of the villages. It was a fascinating visit, and I don’t want to dismiss the dramatic differences you can still see in their way of life. They live on very little, have few material possessions, and do seem to be happy. I just wonder if their increasing contact with our civilization will change that though. They didn’t know they were poor until we arrived to show them.

On the way up we visited an elephant preserve and had a chance to ride elephants for an hour or so. They really are marvelous creatures, and it is one of the great deficiencies of our modern lifestyle that elephants no longer participate. I feel we should encourage greater elephant usage and propose, as a modest first step, that we require all parking lots to have at least one elephant space. It could be located next to the handicapped space, and would be similar in size but would have one of those elevated platforms for mounting and dismounting the beast.

Each elephant has a dedicated caretaker, called a Mahout, who is paired with the animal when both are young. They learn each others quirks and grow old together. If the elephant dies I believe the Mahout is burned on the same funeral pyre, though it is possible I am either confused or just making this up. One fun thing you can do in Chiang Mai is become a Mahout for a day. You are paired with an elephant and learn to feed it and bathe it in the river. Bathing an elephant is no quick task – just cleaning under the armpits can take hours. Is anyone out there interested in investing with me in a chain of brushless walk-through elephant washes? Tusk waxing would be available at an additional charge.

Not surprisingly, elephants aren’t particularly fuel efficient – they are the SUVs of the passenger animal world. Before ascending we were encouraged to buy bundles of bananas “to make friendly with elephant”. Our particular pachyderm got about 50 feet to the banana. He would stop short and refuse to go any further until we offered up another to his probing snout. He would also make that wonderful trumpeting noise that elephants make. We were quite concerned that we would run out of bananas and be stranded in the forest. Fortunately, the Mahouts had thought this through and placed strategic elephant refueling stations along the route where local children, sitting on platforms 10 feet off the ground, would restock us for 50 cents a bundle. Elephants turn out to be flexible-fuel vehicles and can also be made friendly with sugar cane. That takes longer to crunch than a banana so they will get about 200 feet to a 10 inch section of cane. The trunk of an elephant really is a miraculous thing to behold. I accidentally dropped my water bottle on the ground and ours picked it up and handed it back to me, none the worse if you don’t mind elephant snot.

Your faithful correspondent

Walkabout Dave