Elephants

Thailand is awash with water. Fields have become lakes. Streams have become rivers – rushing torrents of water that pour from the northern mountains into the city of Bangkok. Crocodiles have been found in living rooms. The motorway has become a carpark. City roads have become canals, bathtubs have been converted to boats, mattresses into rafts. And this is where we have flown into, at 3pm on a humid Saturday afternoon, landing in the City of Angels that is drowning under the wrath of the monsoon Gods. The boys and I are good swimmers but not that good, so plans to explore Bangkok are abandoned and instead we head inland to the higher ground of Kanchanaburi.

In contrast to the hustle and bustle of Bangkok we find ourselves in a tranquil haven, surrounded by forests of banana plants and banyan trees. To balance the tranquility of this world however, I have the boys. Two days in, and already Orly has fallen into the river Kwae, cut his hand on a machete I told him not to touch, and stuck his finger in an electric fan. Dow has swallowed river water, vomited in the back of a tuk tuk and is still delighting in the drama of finding a leech on his shin. Food has been interesting, a chaotic game of roulette, never sure until its too late whether hot means just hot or spicy hot, which leaves Orly teary eyed and choking his mouthful back out onto the plate. Sleep has been equally interesting. The boys have insisted on sleeping with me and its been nights full of arms and legs, of shunting bottoms and soft snores.

But none of this is what this first week of travelling has predominantly been about. If I could sum it up what has moved, awed, terrified and seduced us most are the elephants; the land whales, the moon beasts with the crescent tusks. Without them Thailand would not be the country that it is today. They built it. Literally.
Ever since I began, elephants have been my favourite animal, from the bed time tales of A.A. Milne’s heffalumps, to the night I woke up in the African wilderness to find an elephant eating from the tree under which I slept. Loyally, steadfastly, they have not wavered from the top of my favourate animal list, and consequently this love has been passed down from mother to child. Yet not once in all my years of travelling, trekking doggedly through wilderness, rainforest and desert, in all my years of exhalting their praises, researching their plight, have I ever been able to touch one. Until now that is.

We saw our first elephant the night we got here, on the long drive away from the floods as we trundled our way through the traffic clogged roads. We had stopped by the side of the road, at a small ramshackle cafe for a cool drink of lime tea, when behind us a trumpeting sounded and out of the humid night air walked a young calf, led by its mahout. It walked right past us, its trunk curled like a saxophone, its India-shaped ears flapping like giant eyelashes, swatting away the noise, fanning away the heat. Two large baskets, laden with bamboo, hung on either side from the harness on its back. Chains locked around its ankles, rusted and heavy. Its tusks had been filed down, only a tip of ivory white peeking roughly above its jaw. It was a street elephant, a begging elephant, that did the rounds with its mahout, collecting money off unsuspecting tourists in exchange for the delight of feeding it. Sometimes these elephants work ten hour shifts, dehydrated and undernourished, despite the law which forbids it.

The Sunday Times: Kanchanaburi, Thailand

Now though we find ourselves in different territory, at The Elephant World Rescue Santuary, thirty two kilometres from the town of Kanchanaburi. We are greeted by Agnes, a dutch woman, with wild black hair, who came to Thailand to set up a nusery school, but on finding an elephant chained by the railway, raised the money to buy it and brought it to the sanctuary where they both ended up staying.

The boys are initially more interested in the five kittens that have just been born, rescuing them from an exuberant three year old girl who has already killed one of the family’s chickens with her over zealous love. But very soon they are helping me prepare balls of sticky rice for the older elephants who no longer have any teeth, and cannot therefore chew the bamboo leaves they would usually feed on.

Armed with our rice balls we all march down to the river and are there confronted by the sight of nine elephants grazing peacefully in the shorter grasses.

“What is her name?‚” I ask Agnes, as one of the huge beasts silently approaches.

“Somboon.” she replies. “It means Completely. She was rescued from an elephant camp, made to work ten hour days, carrying tourists on her back, actually the place which cannot hold much weight. She is fifty seven years old now.”

Orly is afraid and hides behind me, but Dow is all eagerness, at the age of eight striving to be a boy-man. I step forwards, my palm outstretched towards her. Somboon steps back, sways away from me. I watch her trunk stirring up the dust, as if doodling on a blank page. It’s the snout I want to touch, the elephant’s hand. She can pull trees from the earth with that snout, can douse for water. She could uncork a bottle with it, pick up a pin. The Aryans of the first millennium called the elephant Mrigi Hastin, the beast with a head-finger. As if to demonstrate, she coils her snout around a banana and fusses with it until it rests exactly as she wants it before scooping it up into her mouth.

Agnes speaks gently, soothing her to take the food from my hand. Slowly her trunk reaches out. You can not rush an elephant. It takes two and a half days for them to digest food. Foreplay can last three days. Pregnancy two years. Even the air it breathes frugally, only twelve times a minute. They are the nearest living thing on earth to a cloud, large and grey and floating gently across the land.

I reach my hand out, slowly, cautiously. Then suddenly she grabs the ball of sticky rice from my hand, and then I’m touching her, stroking the length of her trunk, the skin muddy and rough beneath my palm. She is the texture of a worn leather couch.

“Good girl,” I say softly as from above she watches me, her rust-coloured eye gleaming in the light. Finally I have touched my first elephant.

We feed them all after that, a grey wall surrounds us, trunks stretching out for more and more and more. An elephant eats three and a half tons a day.

“What are we going to eat for lunch?” asks Orly, who has got braver now, feeding them himself.

“I don’t know,” I tell him.

“I expect it’s cat,” he replies.

Afterwards we head down to the river where a rope swing drops us into the brown waters. Behind us elephants wade in. The water is full of elephant dung in moments. The boys are delighted. Despite all the delights of Eastern promise, it would seem toilet humour and bottom burps are still the prominent source of amusement when travelling with two small kids. The only difference is that now the word “elephant” is put before each joke.

I then watch as the two most precious beings to me in the world ride out of the water, barebacked like real life Mogli-boys, off into the jungle on their elephants.

I stand at the waters edge as Somboon comes onto the shore. Her snout feels along the muddy bank towards my bare feet. I stand very still. Somboon strokes across the earth, hesitates before reaching my left foot, and then, just before she retreats, I feel the cool of her snout tickling against my skin. I look down and there across my toes is a wet muddy print.

“An elephant kiss.” says Agnes behind me.

“Yes,” I say, and then Samboon lowers to the ground and I climb on board using her front leg as a steps and follow my two boys off into the jungle.