Splashing Elephant ~ Mae Tang

Another shot from Mae Tang park of a mahout ordering the elephant to act crazy and splash all around to get the curious tourists wet and giggling.
I was particularly happy to have a long zoom lens allowing me to stay away from the water and not get my camera all wet.
Getting sprayed by a big geyser in Iceland was enough!

Note: My apologies for the lack of updates in the past few days. I am in the process of revamping my whole blog and website and got caught with a lot of work. I will try to keep posting once every 2 days until my website is up and running again. Stay tuned!

Elephant shower ~ Mae Tang

Another elephant shot from Mae Tang Elephant Park. This big one was happy showering people around the river while the mahout was riding it. Needless to say I tried to stay as far as possible not to get my camera equipment all wet!

Elephant Bathing is one of the activities of the park. Some parks actually let the visitors get in the river and help wash the elephant but this one was only for mahouts while tourists watch from the bank.

Chillin' Mahout ~ Mae Tang

The Elephant Parks in Thailand are filled with activities from elephant riding, elephant bathing to bamboo rafting.
While some mahouts entertain the public with elephants playing football, others get ready to take the tourists through a jungle on the back of the melancholic pachyderms. And eventually have a deserved break!
Most of these mahouts work long hours and even have to skip lunch to occupy the demanding tourists.

I saw this Thai mahout smoking a cigarette while watching the tourists clapping enthusiastically at the elephants painting flowers. I loved his style and pose!

The Mahout

What is a Mahout I hear you say?

A Mahout is that guy on top of the pachyderm. It's the person who trains and drives the elephant.
Mahout comes from the hindi word mahavat. These trainers start very early as a young boy and are each assigned an elephant with whom they will "bond". They usually stay with the same elephant all their life (or until one of them dies obviously).
Originally, mahouts used to train elephants to help with logging in the forests. These big strong animals pulled huge logs across long distances in the jungle. But when Thailand banned logging due to widespread destruction of the forests, more and more elephants started to be used (especially in Thailand) for the tourism business.
Today 95% of Thai elephants are privately owned and domesticated in elephant parks to offer shows and rides for the demanding tourists.

On the photo, you can also notice the ankus, a sharp metal hook mounted on a stick that the mahout uses to handle (or punish) the elephant. Luckily I've only seen them use the stick part to tap on the head.

Elephant Ride ~ Mae Tang

When I was invited to the Mae Tang Elephant Park, I participated to many of their activities including elephant shows, elephant bathing, bamboo rafting and of course, elephant rides!

I had to test it and well... It's not the most comfortable ride I've had. Only camels are probably worse. I preferred the stoic oxen pulling their carts on a muddy road.
It's also a real challenge to take sharp photos while riding those pachyderms. I had to increase my ISO, put my camera on continuous mode and shoot away! One over a dozen shots should be sharp enough to work with!
So the mahout (trainer) took us for a 30min ride across the jungle while stopping from time to time at these towers (this one on the photo was broken and abandoned) to push us to buy bananas or sugar cane to feed the elephant.
The trick is to refuse every time, the mahout will get a few sugar canes/bananas for free to feed the animal anyway... they don't want an angry and hungry beast wrecking havoc through the jungle!

Well, although it doesn't seem like it, I still enjoyed the ride and would probably do it again, just for the fun! (Do not think about motion sickness..).