I knew I definitely wanted to see the hill tribes while I was here, but the packages I found to visit these tribes included an elephant ride. I hesitated. These days, I try to avoid elephants as much as possible. I had a traumatizing event involving elephants while in India. I tried to overcome this terror in Nepal, but I found my irrational fear towards these gentle giants still exists.
I think it's time I share my elephant story with all of you, so you know where I'm coming from. First of all, I realize that not all of you are going to believe me when I tell this story. But, I want you to know that I have not embellished this story one bit. If anything, I'm making it sound less serious than what it really was. This was one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me.
It was November 2010, I was in Munnar, India. I had hired a tuk-tuk driver for 5 days to drive me anywhere I wanted. His name was Shiju.
This is a tuk-tuk:
On this day, we were headed to the wildlife sanctuary, which was 60 km away. It was a beautiful, sunny day. On the way there, I bought a huge bundle of bananas to feed the monkeys along the road. I love monkeys! They were a little scared, so I would throw a banana a little closer to the tuk-tuk each time until they were really close. They started to get a little too close and aggressive, so I would say "Go Shiju!" and he would take off fast in the tuk-tuk. I was afraid the monkeys would steal the bag of bananas. We laughed so hard. They kept stuffing the bananas in their cheeks until they looked like chipmunks. It was such a fun day and the sun was shining bright. Life was grand. After 3 hours, we arrived at the sanctuary. We planned to hike a couple hours to a waterfall and back. I was escorted by Shiju and another Indian boy that worked as a guide for the sanctuary. Both these boys were very young and skinny as a toothpick, they couldn't have weighed more than 100 pounds. They were also a good foot shorter than me.
I wasn't prepared for this hike. I was wearing jeans and clog sandals. The hike was kinda hilly and I started to work up a sweat and my jeans started sticking to me and my clogs started getting slippery so it was difficult to walk. I was really uncomfortable and just wanted to get back to the tuk-tuk.
We had just begun to make our way back from the waterfall, walking in a single file line with the guide in front, me in the middle, and Shiju behind me. There were large trees and bushes surrounding us. It was beautiful. We were crossing a little creek which required us to step on rocks to get across. I was negotiating my step on the second or third stone, looking down and concentrating where I was stepping with my useless clogs. All of a sudden, I see the guide, who was about 5 feet in front of me, throw his hands up, turn around and start running towards me. Everything went in slow motion from this point on. Simultaneously, I hear the trees in front of us rustle wildly and also hear a big swoosh of air. I frantically screeched "what?!" to the guide as he was running towards me. I grabbed his pencil thin arm. At the same time I look up and see what caused the guide to get so spooked. A huge Indian elephant was charging straight at us, coming out of the trees with his ears flapping!
My mouth drops and I swivel on my heel and hop-scotch it across the rocks and back onto the dirt path. Even though I could hardly walk in my slippery sandals, my flight response took over and I could miraculously run fast in these sandals. I felt an overwhelming surge of adrenaline pump through my veins. We pass by Shiju and I grab his skinny arm too and we are all running connected together now. We are sprinting as fast as we can.
My legs feel like they're moving slow because every second that passes feels like a minute. But in reality, we were running like the wind. It's funny what adrenaline can make you do. I didn't look back. I was just waiting to feel the crush from the elephants gigantic foot. I could hear branches breaking behind us. I knew we were undoubtedly going to get trampled, it was just a matter of when. I'm shocked when it doesn't happen. We run off the path into the bushes and hide behind a tree. When I come to my senses, I think, "this flimsy tree isn't going to save us! The elephant will just knock it over!" I feel utterly vulnerable and trapped as I look around for a way to escape this unbelievable situation. Shiju and the guide are rambling in Hindi and I can't understand anything they're saying. They speak very, very little English. They kept saying "don't worry, madame." But it was impossible for them to comfort me when they were obviously shook up themselves. Their little brown hands were trembling just as bad as mine.
Luckily, the aggravated elephant had retreated back into the trees and was pacing back and forth while keeping a watchful eye on us. Then we see that he is near another large elephant and 3 baby elephants. 5 elephants all together! So that explains it. He was protecting his young and we had stumbled upon them accidentally! At this point, I'm so overcome with fear, all I can do is whimper "I don't want to do this anymore, I want to go home", over and over and over. I couldn't think straight. I had a hold of Shiju's arm and wouldn't let go. I wanted nothing more than for a helicopter to land next to me, swoop me up and transport me safely to Windom, MN.... to my mommy. I was so afraid, I couldn't even cry. The guide decided we needed to hike completely off the track, through the tall brush, to get around the angry elephant and his family. We trekked through huge cobwebs with spiders the size of my hand. Even though I passionately hate spiders, this didn't even phase me. I was so focused on getting out of that sanctuary alive and away from those elephants, I didn't even care.
We were all silent on the hike back, concentrating on getting our distance from the elephants and dealing with our emotions as it sunk in what just happened. We had just been within feet of a charging wild elephant and we were still alive!
On the 3 hour drive back to the hotel, I was still shaking. I had a totally different outlook on life. Do you know the feeling after you just escaped death? The world looked different, the colors were brighter, music sounded sweeter and my thoughts were much clearer. I'm not kidding. I can't really explain it. I was so thankful to be alive. It was a huge reminder of how precious life really is.
When I got back to my hotel, I told the man at the front desk what happened. He looked at me with big eyes and said, "Madame, that's verdy, verdy bad! Verdy bad!" He said around there when an elephant charges people, it's never a good outcome. Then he looked at me like, "you shouldn't be standing here right now." I get the heebie jeebies when I think about how close to death we came.
So this is why I'm afraid of elephants!
However, I was still able to make myself get on this elephant for the sake of the tour.
Oh, by the way, visiting the hill tribes was pretty cool. here's some pictures of the Thailand tribes:
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