Put your swimming trunks on

AN elephant with good ears is a must for the novice mahout. Tricia Welsh goes to elephant driving school in Thailand's Golden Triangle.

Don't forget the hand brake ... mahouts and their elephants in training at the 'elephant driving school' at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre. Picture: AP

THERE is no elegant way to climb on an elephant. You can go up over the side or over the trunk, or you can roll up with the beast from the ground.

Whichever way you decide leaves you vulnerable to slip-ups, slip-offs or indeed being left standing on the ground.

I learn this quickly after many unladylike attempts and several hours' instruction at a mahout course in northern Thailand.

Boon Mee, chief mahout at the Elephant Camp at Anantara Resort and Spa in the Golden Triangle near Chiang Rai, is patient as he shows us would-be mahouts the intricacies of climbing on to these three to four-tonne pachyderms.

We are timid when we arrive in the early morning to collect the elephants from the forest, where they forage by day and sleep at night.

We give them a wide berth as they eagerly trundle down to the deep watering hole for their morning bath.

But after feeding them ripe bananas and sticks of sugar cane, we are on intimate terms, patting them and fondling their bristly heads.

The elephant camp is set up like a traditional mahout village, which used to exist in the hills of northern Thailand when most of the country's elephants were employed in the logging industry.

After commercial logging was banned, many elephants were out of work and ended up being abused in illegal logging camps.

They were fed amphetamines to force them to work longer hours, or found their way to the tourist-crowded streets of Bangkok as attractions.

Elephant conservation preserves small communities
THE Government set up the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre (TECC) to ensure the wellbeing of elephants, wild and domestic, and small communities trying to make a living from them.

The camp at the Anantara is the northern extension of the TECC and offers visitors a range of activities with the elephants. These include bathing, driving lessons and adventure treks of various lengths, which combine to create a one, two or three-day mahout course.

Director of elephants at the camp is Englishman John Roberts, who has been working with elephants for five years. He's passionate about his jumbo charges, and they seem to appreciate his concern, as do the six mahouts under his care.

Roberts tells us that two-year-old Plai Tawan was rescued by the elephant camp after having been hit by a car in the nightclub area of Patpong in Bangkok. He's the only male in the herd, which is very much a matriarchal community.

On arrival at the camp, he immediately adopted seven-year-old Pang Kam Sao. The two are inseparable.

There are 10 elephants at the moment, with three cute babies. The others range from 21 to 49 years. The oldest is Pang Yom, a docile 63-year-old no longer "working".

"Working", for an elephant at least, means taking tourists through their paces at the mahout course.

Fortunately, I score Pang Yom, who seems to sense my wariness and tries to reassure me with helpful gestures, such as holding her ears out for me to grab when I'm climbing, then folding them back over my legs once I'm on board.

Once we are launched around the elephant's neck, it's a most comfortable bareback ride.

Suddenly, one heads for the water hole and, before long, we are all parading one after the other into the water, which is deep enough to submerge the animals.

They seem to smile knowingly at one another as they sink below the water with us still on their backs, only to resurface with trunks spraying over everybody like naughty children.

We all feel like Hannibal over the alps as we ride our charges along the winding, tree-lined road back to the resort, alighting as elegantly as possible alongside limousines carrying resort guests with surprised looks on their faces.

Next day we can't wait to have another taste of a mahout's life. This time we head out along the Ruak River, which forms the border with Burma.

We lumber along majestically in convoy. Every now and then an elephant snacks on a bamboo shoot or tackles overhanging vines, pulling everything attached on top of you.

Climbing up steep, muddy banks proves good fun. I feel as if I will slide off, but Pang Yom secures me firmly with her flattened ears.

We wander by the resort's vast kitchen garden and into the forest, where we leave them for the night to forage and rest.

Then it's back to the resort's spa for the day's perfect finale, a one-hour mahout's revival back massage. Pure heaven.