Dances with elephants-Mr P takes a joy ride!

There is nothing wrong in dreaming about riding an elephant! Mr P wanted to ride an elephant, get his picture taken in that glory, and post it on Facebook. This wish had budded in his mind ever since he saw the movie Bride and Prejudice, where the hero and heroine rode on an elephant in the last scene. Mr P had thought it was pretty cool!

So this time on his trip to India, Mr P visited the elephant park at Kottoor near Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. As soon as he reached the place, Mr P booked his ride straight away. He was worried that if all the people visiting the park decided to take an elephant ride, he would be deprived of the opportunity. He was given a time to turn up at a spot for his ride and in the meantime, Mr P decided to take a walk around the park. He saw several elephants, the proboscideans ranged from very young hairy ones to huge giants. It was then that Mr P realized that he was actually quite nervous about riding an elephant. Mr P felt he needed to keep at a distance from them, even from the baby ones. The baby elephants were too playful and seemed to want to tickle his ears with their trunks! As for the big, adult elephants, he felt them giving him such deep looks as if they knew all his darkest secrets, even the nightly fridge raids! Indeed he had heard about how intelligent elephants were. 

Mr P now started having serious reservations about the elephant ride but was worried that if he withdrew now, it would make him look like a coward. When the time came, with shaking legs, he made his way to the location.

The mahout was waiting for him with a huge elephant. 

Faint heartedly, Mr P gazed at the large mammal which seemed to give him a mean, disdainful look.

“Can I have a ride on that elephant?” Mr P asked pointing to a frolicking baby elephant that stood some distance away.

“Oh! No sir! It is too small to carry people. We only use adult elephants for rides,” said the mahout.

With no way of escape, Mr P decided to climb on top of the giant that had now bent down on its knees at the instance of the mahout.

“If Tarzan can do it, so can I,” muttered Mr P as he proceeded to mount.

Climbing onto the back of an elephant was indeed a feat and after several aborted attempts, Mr P finally made it to the top. As the elephant stood up erect, he sat astride on its back. Those who have sat astride on top of an elephant would realize how wide apart you have to keep your legs! It was almost like doing the splits!

As the elephant moved forward, Mr P felt very uncomfortable, so much so that he decided to change his position to side-straddle. Slowly he moved his legs around. However, on sitting sideways he found that he had moved too much to one side. He kept sliding further down the side of the elephant every time it moved. His silky, smooth track pants were partly to be blamed for this.  A flustered Mr P then decided to return back to his original position and he started moving his legs around again. However, he had lost his sense of orientation in his anxiety and when he finished adjusting his seating, he found that he was facing the back of the elephant! So Mr P started to turn around again.

Changing one’s position atop a moving elephant is not an easy task for a person riding an elephant for the first time, but misfortune had not glanced his way yet. With the last move however, Mr P nearly fell off and was saved only by grabbing the rope around the elephant’s neck. Somehow he maneuvered himself back on top. He was now lying prostrate on top of the elephant, facing its tail end and hugging the animal for dear life. Hearing a loud applause he slowly lifted up his head and saw that he had gathered a huge audience. People thought they were watching an atop-the-elephant-acrobatic show. The mahout however, had no such conceptions and decided to end the joy ride. Very soon (though it felt like eternity to Mr P), the elephant stopped moving and the mahout got it to kneel down. He gathered brave Mr P from the back of the animal. He had nearly fainted. With an end to all the wriggling and squiggling on its back, the Elephas maximus indicus breathed a deep sigh of relief and stood up. No pictures or videos were taken, so Facebook missed a hilarious upload! 

The mahout and the elephant walked away traumatised. Both seemed to need counselling!