Day 11 - Elephant Trek - Uphill - By Elephant

This is where the experience varies depending on which section you walked or rode. I shall tell my version, Pete can tell his and Crosby, Stephens or Turnbull (or one of the girls) can tell their bit.
We arrived at the end of the bridge to meet our trusty steeds. A few elephants met us and they started loading our rucksack on. After a lot of jostling between porters, mahout and elephants the bags were strapped down and we were ready to load us!

The elephants knelt, and we were warned that their patience was limited so to climb up quick! The knack was to place your right foot on the elephants front leg, then your left foot on it's flank and then haul yourself into the wooden contraption on its back, ably aided my the mahout pulling you from above and the porters pushing you from behind. Not exactly dignified, and nothing like the cartoon versions where the elephant helps you up with its trunk!



The minute you were sat the elephants stood up, in a rather lurching manor! Now I have a healthy and completely rational fear of elephants, they are big, moody and have every right to be annoyed as you scramble onto them, so clearly the elephants allocated to Rachel and myself where about 200 feet tall, so a big stroppy male elephant a few miles off the ground, perfect. Rachel also shares my fearful respect of elephants and my equally healthy fear of heights!



We are not irrational, elephants can stomp on you and hurt you and falling from any height isn't exactly good for the constitution. The second our bottoms landed onto the "seat" our 80 foot giant stood up and headed off into the jungle, so I am presuming that the other girls got on their steeds ok (Pete, Stephens, Crosby and Turnbull were supervising the others whilst Rachel and I laughed in that close to hysteria way!)

The other elephants soon fell in behind and we set off along the "path." Having the tallest elephant meant that we were the ones to encounter every spiky bit of foliage along the way, though our mahout cheerfully machete-ed his way through much of it. As he was right handed it tended to be a one sided clearance, I was continually impressed by Hayley's ducking ability.



As we lumbered along on the relative comfort of our beasts the others set off to walk. We caught glimpses of them through the trees as they tried to find a less boggy path. Occasionally they got ahead of us and stood waiting in a clearing. It was a long trek up a big hill, and we all felt bad that they had volunteered for the tough upward leg. You could not help but be impressed by the power and agility of the elephants, they climbed over some tricky obstacles, moved trees out of the way and never lost their footing.



The deal was to get to the top and then swap over so the walkers got to ride and the riders got to walk. In a rocky clearing we scrambled, with true elegance, down to Terra firma and awaited the walkers. A little chaos ensued in installing the now tired and muddy walkers on the elephants and then they set off. We cheerfully waved good bye and then set off up the hill!