Above: Whiteblack and Nat with their mahout teacher, Lai, and elephant, Pang Khod. Below: Whiteblack and Nat relax with Pang Khod. and Nat and Pang Khod take a bath.
Whiteblack and Nat have just completed their three day “mahout” course, learning to train and keep elephants from a people who have been working with elephants for hundreds of years. Our Mahout teacher was named Lai and our elephant was named Pang Khod. We bathed twice a day with the elephants — they are very hygienic creatures — and learned various methods of getting on and off an elephant (including sliding down its forehead and trunk); asking the elephant to pick up things and give them to the mahout (which was useful when Whiteblack jumped off unexpectedly and needed help getting back up; how to tell an elephant to go forward, backward and turn left and right; asking the elephant to kneel, lie down, raise its truck, and much more… We confess that its’s hard to remember it all, and we definitely think we will need to return for refresher course. It’s a bit discouraging to realize that the elephants know more Thai than we do… Each evening we brought the elephants to the “jungle” where they spent the night, and picked them up the next morning before the two shows for visitors. Whiteblack had the easier task of mostly riding in Nat’s pocket while Nat demonstrated how to get on and off an elephant, including vaulting on Pang Khod’s lowered head after sliding down his trunk!
There will be much more on this great experience — pictures, videos, stories. For now, it’s time for Whiteblack and Nat to go to bed — we know it’s morning for you, but it’s night for us!
Whiteblack and
[...] of African elephants on the forest in Krugar National Park in South Africa (see her photo below). Nat and Whiteblack the Penguin enjoyed a special training in Thailand earlier this year, learning how to work with elephants (see Nat giving a bath to his elephant [...]