Elephant Madness!

The other day Juan and I decided to do our first big activity and we went elephant riding in Pai. Wow, it was so much fun! I have ridden an elephant in India before but I wanted to try riding bareback and be able to spend some time playing with the elephants which is something I have never done. The great thing about Thailand is that they love to sell you things that you want; their goal is to have good business, for you to enjoy and come back again. We found a company that was willing to take us out by ourselves (rather than in a big group) on our own elephant and essentially do whatever we want for a really great price, they even brought along our own guy who took pictures and videotaped the whole thing.

We decided that rather than going through the jungle we would head over to the river and play in the water with the elephants. Such a good decision! We were able to see some of the jungle anyway when we were walking to the river. The walk was beautiful, the views of the town and the landscape were painfully pretty, and riding an elephant bareback was a lot of fun. It didn’t take us long though before our butts were thanking us for not doing the whole half-day trip through the jungle, the spine of the elephant and huge muscles were almost unbearable on our bottoms by the time we arrived (actually three days later our legs and bums and still hurting).
When we got to the river we walked around for a bit and enjoyed the scenery some more and then it was time to play! Our elephant was a blast, he would sit down in the water and slide us off his back, he would stand up tall and playfully shake us off until we went flying into the water, he also would fill his trunk with water and give us a nice shower or spay us really hard until we would almost fall off again. For almost an hour this continued. When we would fall into the water he would turn sideways to stop the strong current from dragging us away too far and then he would get really low so we could crawl up onto his back. He also let us crawl up his trunk and ride on his head, he would bend down really low, stick his trunk out for us to put our feet on and then as we climbed he would slowly lift us up until we made it to the top. The whole thing was so exhilarating!

At one point when he shook me into the water, I fell off and the current guided me underneath our elephant. I couldn’t get out because his legs were blocking me and the current was too strong. Naturally he started lying down expecting me to crawl back on top of him. As he began to lie on top of me his belly crushed my head for maybe the shortest second of my life the only sound I could hear was my own neck cracking under the water. It was the first and only time in my life where I have ever actually thought “wow, I am going to die right now”. Thankfully our guide was right there, he jumped off our elephant (right on to my neck again which I surely thought was broken by this point) and pulled me out from under the elephant. I was so scared. A part of me wanted to pull out my inner child and swim to the shore and just cry but the bigger part of me won and I timidly crawled back onto my elephant only this time holding on for dear life every time his massive body shook. So yeah, an elephant sat on my head and I survived, unfortunately I have a pretty messed up neck to prove it.

The day was incredible, it was so much fun. I am so thankful that I know how amazing these experiences are. I cannot count how many times during the day I thought “wow, how magical is it that I am just playing with an elephant right now” and magical it was! The ride, playing with the elephant, the tour guide who was on his toes, the scenery, even my scary experience, all of it just made my day so special. And so as always I am having a blast here in Thailand and loving all of my new adventures!