Elephant Struggle

    

        

      As I sat atop the swaying back of an elephant as he plunged through the jungle, my ten year old self was convinced beyond a doubt I would fall off into the murky foliage that lay below. There are no seat-belts or handle-bars to cling to when you ride an elephant in Cambodia— my father and I sat on a simple, cushioned platform that was attached precariously to the elephant’s broad back and each time the beast took a step, we lurched from side to side. I clung to my father’s sweaty hand tightly as we lumbered along. The mahout, the elephant’s handler and “driver,” was far more confident, riding bare-back on the neck of the elephant, a sharpened rod poised to jab into the poor creature if he were to make a miss-step. Before I had gotten on the elephant—a process that involved climbing to a wooden platform built high into a tree and jumping on the animal’s back—I had not liked the look of the painful looking rods the mahouts carried, but now, despite myself I felt grateful for its presence. The elephant was walking on a path that seemed absurdly tiny compared to his great size. On one side, a gaping ravine lay while on the other, the dense jungle crowded in. I was glad for a little insurance that the elephant would go in a straight line.  

      A balmy twilight was settling as we made our way through the dense, sweet smelling forest of bamboo and flowers. We were on our way to the top of a mountain to catch the sun as it set over the crumbling palaces of Angkor Wat. At our hotel, the elephant ride had seemed like a good idea, but now I wasn’t so sure. In addition to my fear of falling off, the elephant was not the kind I had anticipated, having grown up on sleek circus elephants and their similarly well-groomed cousins in the zoo. The elephant we were on now was filthy—his leathery skin was streaked with dirt and punctuated by great bristling hairs. His floppy ears looked like they had been dipped in mud and his trunk was similarly discolored with dried earth. In addition, the animal had a strong stink about him that smelled like a combination of manure, dirty water, and well—elephant. This was not the cuddly image of Dumbo that I had envisioned when my father said “elephant.” This was a hulking, filthy, unpredictable creature.

       I had just become accustomed to the cadence of the elephant’s foot-steps when suddenly, the beast came to a halt before a large cluster of bamboo. I was only confused for a moment before I saw a snake-like trunk gently begin pulling bamboo leaves off their stalks and stuffing them into the elephant’s mouth. The mahout waited for a moment, perhaps hoping that his charge just wanted a quick snack, but the elephant continued to dig in as if this was his first meal in days. The sound of his noshing filled the jungle as the elephant consumed the bamboo leaves with the glee I would usually have expected more from a panda bear than an elephant. I wouldn’t have minded letting our ride finish his meal, but the mahout had other plans. He jabbed his rod into the elephant’s calloused skin, shouted something in Cambodian, and the elephant started plodding again.

The mahout turned back to look at us.
“His name Atkhlean,” he said in broken English, “always eating.”
          I later learned that Atkhlean meant “hungry,” in Cambodian and it was a fitting name. The elephant stopped to snack three more times before we arrived at the top of the mountain, just in time to catch the sun-set. It was beautiful, but I was already eager to ride Atkhlean again, my fear of falling off forgotten. There was something thrilling about being so high from the ground, something even calming in the way the elephant swayed from side to side.
Before we departed, the mahout handed me a sticky, peeled banana on a stick. 
“Feed him this,” he told me, “then maybe not so hungry on the way down.”
I held up my hand as I high as I could, and the elephant’s sand-paper-like trunk wrapped around my fingers, delicately taking the banana.
The mahout’s attempt at satiating the elephant’s enormous hunger was not successful. Atklean stopped for snacks three more times on the way down, but I didn’t mind. Every stop meant I got to ride the elephant a little bit longer.