It was just at Ankor Was in Cambodia an elephant was taking people for rides. it was suggested, as locals and businessmen suggest impetuously, that I’d like to ride the elephant. I said yes and got behind a young girl before me whose parents thought she’d like a ride on an elephant. She looked more dubious. She had a marvellous time taking a turn on the beast and riding eventually back to the clearing where I waited. I heard her wax poetically about her novel experience.
I think the elephant took one look at me, overweight and foreign, and told the trainer he was on strike. The trainer with broken English conveyed the elephant was tired and it was too hot to carry me. I’m sure a lot is lost in translation What the elephant said was, ‘elephant can’t carry fatso’ . The trainer being Thai and buddhist translated for the elephant, ‘the elephant is too tired.’ The seed though was planted in my mind.
Here in Kochi in Southern India at the fabulous Crown Plaza, I asked the marvellous concierge if I could ride an elephant.
“Yes, sir, in Munnad. 150 km from here."
“No locally, somewhere close.” I counted.
“Kodanad Elephant Training Camp is 45 minutes away by the airport. You can’t ride an elephant but you can feed them and wash them if you go before 10 am."
“I’d just like a selfie of me sitting an elephant. “ I said, admitting vanity. Girls look good taking selfies in toilets but for some reasons fat old guys feel the need of an elephant or ferrari to accessorize.
“ They don’t let people ride the elephants at Kodanad any more. There were security concerns at Kodanad last year.” Again I presume something is lost in translation. I expect if he wasn’t polite he’d fill in the details. Something like, a fat old guy who was a western lawyer rode an elephant in Kadanad His weight or attitude pissed off the elephant. The elephant then stampeded through the jungle to rid himself of the lawyer. He then came back and stomped all over the lawyer, his family and a dozen innocent bystander locals before he was brought under control. Hence the expression ‘security concerns’.
‘There’s a temple elephant, very old, very serene, very tame. The Kodanad elephants are still in training. Some very wild, they’re rescue and still learning to be with people. A temple elephant would let you climb up on her and have a picture. The priests wouldn’t let you walk about, but just sit for photo..” Hearing him say it that way I kind of felt like a kid wanting to be in the lap of India’s equivalent of Santa Klaus. The concierge phoned the temple
“There’s a festival this week. All of the elephants at the temple are being leant out to other temples today for the festival. They will come back this evening. You could go to the temple this evening when the elephants return."
“What time."
“9 pm'
‘That’s past my bed time” I said, “ Can I go to Kadonad now."
“I’ll get you a car sir.” he said, happy for me.
That’s how I was again in an air conditioned car watching countless motorcyclists and other vehicles dart about while I video of roadside passings..
I’d read up on the Trip Advisor reviews. I saw comments saying don’t go because the elephants are slaves.
“The elephants are slaves"
‘They’re chained."
I had some misgivings as a consequence but as often as not the reviews are a mix, wildly off or sometimes right on. The positive ones tend to be more often accurate than the negative ones overall. Negative people are more likely to broadcast their negativity whereas positive people often don’t even comment.
The Kodanad Elephant Training Camp was well kept and well organized. I was impressed overall by the staff and camp and lay out. It was all very professionally maintained. Here in a wilderness jungle area at the end of a really bad road there were office buildings and paths with signs in English giving directions and information. My driver came along with me as obviously interested in seeing elephants as I. Indians in general love their elephants.
I paid an extra $150 rupees to take my cameras. It was 100 rupee for camera and 250 for video Somehow despite having my Iphone 11, my Nikon Coolpix 1000 and my GoPro 7 Black I was only charged $150. Indian logic or math. I often can’t tell. It sometimes serves me and sometimes serves them.
I loved the quiet. Bird songs and butterflies. The elephants were eating in the woods along side the road. Each was well fed and appeared rather contented. They had a chain attached to the leg to a tree. I thought of my very pampered cockapoo, Gilbert, and how I leash him everywhere I go. Without the leash he’d wander off and it wouldn’t be safe for him. Unless there’s a female dog in heat he’s content to wait with the extra reassurance of the leash for me. There are so many dangers for an animal in a modern world. Cars especially are bad. People also complain and dogs are stolen or shot. I imagine the problem for elephants is much worse. There’s not the wilderness we have in Canada where we can take bears that are bothering children in the city and relocate them. That’s a horrendously expensive process and I don’t think India has the resources for relocation of elephants but instead have these training camps. Elephants have been domesticated like our horses for thousands of years.
The Kodanad Elephant Training Camp takes rescue elephants and wild elephants and trains them much as we do with horses. I remembered as a child of 5 being put up on my grandad’s Clydesdale Horses. They had been trained to pull the logging wagons. The height of those great horses would have been the same in comparison for me with an adult elephant today. Elephants that are trained to be safe around people commonly are employed in street religious festivals where they go for a walk about in the crowds, something I suspect elephants rather enjoy.
I was impressed the elephants were healthy and well attended. They were well fed and in no distress. I felt at peace with them. I believe they’re telepathic like dolphins and highly empathic. I’m definitely the latter and have been blessed with that sensitivity in my work. In my personal life it’s a different matter. I’m more often seeking solace of aloneness to counter the sheer rawness of the daily encounters in work with disappointment, anger, fear, pain and insanity. Anxiety can be like nails on glass. We are taught that personality disorders get under everyone else’s skin the way neurotics get under their own.
I learned long ago to join and share a nervous system as it was explained to me in training. The psychotherapists empathic joining so different from sympathetic detachment. Prescribing medications or doing things like surgery to a person is different. But always personal touch is so much more revealing.
I closed my eyes and listened to the elephant and immediately she turned to me and acknowledged my presence. Then she returned to eating. Of course this synchronistic moment to me could be called coincidence to another. I prefer the sacredness of the contact rather than the sterility of the other. In that moment I felt the elephant was satisfied.
To be romantically happy she’d need to be many years younger, with her family in the mountains untouched by man, safe from predators. I sometimes think I was born in the wrong century. I don’t want the wild tribesman superstitious existence but sometimes romanticize the wild west of a hundred or two hundred years ago when a horse, a burro, a dog, a bed roll and a rifle were all that were needed. The elephant seemed as content in her own way as I’m content in mine. We’ve each got a pretty good existence waiting for the Messiah to come or just passing through lives.
I did love seeing the happy Indian trainer ride by on the proud elephant. The two were having a good time. Friends. The elephant was doing something which excited her. I think tame lives in general can be somewhat boring so that changes are better appreciated. My favourite moment was watching the elephant lift it’s leg, like my dog Gilbert does. Gilbert anticipates I want to shake his paw. The elephant lifted his leg to assist his trainer to get down. A touching moment.
I love elephants. In my perfect world now I’ve a dog and cat companion, a horse, a burro , a cow, a dolphin, some geese and an elephant. We journey together. My entourage. It’s not particularly practical but in some reality it’s possible. Since Laura loves animals, she can come a long too but she’d need to ride the dolphin perhaps who’d swim in air as other dolphins swim in the sea.
After watching the elephants for a while we walked over to the deer park where there were so many beautiful deer hanging out like they did on the castle grounds in England. Deer parks are common there. Here there was a smaller spotted type of deer similar to our Canadian white tail and a larger robust deer similar to our Canadian mule deer. They all appeared well fed and happy as deer can be happy. Deer are mostly afraid in the wilds, constantly on guard, always fearful of hunters and predators. Here they were just socializing, which deer love to do. A kind of deer tea party. I doubt they’d have anything negative to say about Kodanad.
Kodanad is a lovely place. I was so glad to see the elephants. I didn’t even want a selfie on top of an elephant after visiting these majestic creatures I certainly wouldn’t want to offend one. I figure I’d better lose 20 to 50 lbs before I look for an elephant ride, just to be courteous.
There’s actual elephant safari’s for days here in Kerala. Munnar advertises them, for instance. My friend John took his sons on a horseback round up ride in the west camping out for nights after days of riding. I imagine an elephant safari would be such an adventure. John’s kids still talk of their round up ride and they’re married adults today.
I loved the walking along the river path where the elephants come to be bathed. It was so scenic and peaceful.
Kodanad Elephant Training Camp was a great experience. I suspect the negative comments were from urbanites who have no real knowledge of anything outside of the sterile elite world of parking lots and sky scrapers. I’m so thankful my grandparents had a ranch and logging company. Spending time as a child and youth there with my rural nephews helped so much with laying a more grounded foundation for me. It certainly helped me well in medicine which is far more hands on than the aloof sterility of the worst of intellectualism and academia. Elephant rescue, elephant training camps and elephant orphanages are best depicted by the movingly beautiful movie we saw with Rob Lowe and Kristin Davis, Holiday in the Wild. It just came out this year on Netflix.
I wanted to bring an elephant home with me. But the driver, the hotel and the airlines might object.
I loved learning at the National Museum of India that the animal headed gods of the Indian Pantheon reflect the desire for enlightenment. The elephant headed Ganesh, so much loved in India, represents a person who has the quiet peaceful mind of an elephant with a human body. The elephant has a heart rate of 30 beats per minute. That’s calmer than marathon runners. Certainly a lot slower than panic attacks.
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