Bathing With Elephants

When I first imagined coming to Sri Lanka, I had a number of things on my "to do" list. Top of which was to wash an elephant!

I have had the good fortune to ride an elephant in the past, through jungle land in Thailand, and I have seen elephants in the wild (on safari in South Africa) and in captivity at Chester Zoo, but I wanted to see Asian elephants up close. I was aware that some elephant sanctuaries are not all they are cracked up to be - often abusing the creatures they exploit to draw in tourists. I therefore did my homework when I got to Kandy and investigated a number of options. I chose the Millennium Elephant Sanctuary, about 50km from where I was staying.

This centre had been running for close to 40 years and it's history is rather interesting. The owner collected injured and abused elephants from the area and brought them to his home. There he tended them, fed them and studied them. As his collection grew, so he employed more elephant handlers (mahout) and soon local Sri Lankans and the occasional tourist came to visit. 28 years ago, a female elephant joined the centre and gave birth to the first Asian elephant born in captivity. Sadly, the owner was then killed by one of his own elephants (a reminder that these giants can be extremely dangerous, though often inadvertently.) All assumed that his wife would close down the centre and put down the elephant which had killed her husband, but instead she chose to continue with her husband's work.

A few years ago the actor Brian Blessed visited the centre for 5 days to film and see for himself if the centre truly did look after the elephants in their care. His subsequent programme was very positive. Today, the Millennium Elephant Sanctuary has 7 elephants and is joined by dozens of international 'gap year' students who come and stay and volunteer to help tend the elephants for a while. During my visit 12 young women from Germany arrived, eager to start working for a few weeks.

Despite all my research, I still paid very close attention to how the mahout handled their elephants, determined to stop my visit at the first sign of any abuse. I did notice that all the elephants had an ankle chain, which were moved from leg to leg and when I enquired about them, was told that their use was two fold: firstly to tether the elephants in their paddocks each night and second to help check their speed when they are walking in the sanctuary with an inexperienced rider.

Satisfied, I was then introduced to my elephant, a female named Mahindra. She was fabulous. As soon as she arrived at my location, she reached out inquisitively with her trunk to say hello.

I took her for a ride, a challenging task as she was so broad and I was sat on a simple padded blanket holding on to a rope around her neck. She had no marks or blemishes on her anywhere and I relaxed into the experience. Crossing a bridge over the river was daunting as the drop, should I slip off, was considerable. We walked for some time, with Mahindra occasionally stopping to eat plants and shrubs from the path. At one point she went off the path completely in search of food and the mahout, who was walking close by, had to speak to her and tap his sticks together for her to respond to his instruction to "come along."

After 20 minutes, more than enough considering how precarious my seat and how steep and uneven the terrain, we returned to the centre and the river. Mahindra let me dismount and then slowly walked into the water and lay down. I followed and proceeded to splash water all over her and then scrub her leathery skin with a large piece of coconut husk. She splashed me a few times with her tail and clearly enjoyed the experience, especially when I scrubbed her head. I was then told to climb on top of her whilst she was laying down and she would stand up with me bareback on top. To climb on board a prostrate elephant is not easy and I had to stand on the back of her knee to clamber aboard and then hold on tight as she stood up. As I sat there grinning at my experience - looking around me as if to say "look what I did," Mahindra stuck her trunk into the water, sucked up a huge amount of water and then blasted me with it! I nearly fell off backwards laughing, which made her do it again. She proceeded to soak me a dozen times, before she'd had enough fun and walked up out of the river for some food.

She took me to a large concrete step so I could dismount next to a stall selling baskets of fruit for 200 rupees (about £1.00) and then stood there expectantly. When I walked off in the other direction (to get my wallet) she trumpeted, shook her head and swayed from foot to foot and pointed her trunk at the fruit! I told her to hang on a minute and asked my driver to get my wallet for me whilst I picked up a bowl. She gobbled everything - skin and all - from whole bananas to large slices of melon. When it was finished, I showed her the empty bowl and said "all gone" and she shook her huge head and stepped back, allowing me to give her a final pat on her trunk to say goodbye.

When I saw someone else riding Mahindra later on in the day, I was jealous and wanted to tell them to get off my elephant!