THE VIEW FROM ATOP MOUNT WASSANA

Thai Elephant Conservation Center, Lampang Province, Thailand (November 27, 2006). The first step is to reach up and grab on to the gigantic, leathery ear lobe.

You tug on it and call out, “song soong!”

A giant right foreleg lifts and the lower leg curls under.

You step with your left foot onto the back side of the lower leg, which by now is parallel to the ground. You step up and place right foot on top of the upper leg, which is probably at about a 45 degree angle.

The elephant then lifts its entire curled leg up -- with you standing on top of it. The effect is kind of like being on an elevator (an "elephantvator," if you will). Standing on the top of upper leg, you find yourself lifted to a height from which you can then clamber up the elephant’s side.

The giant ear continues to play a role in this process, as it gives you something up high to grip as you heave yourself up and onto the back.

Once atop, you make yourself comfortable, just above the neck at the point where the elephant’s head crests to form a dome of sorts.

Your bare feet dangle behind the pachyderm’s ears, and with the command “bai,” and a few taps of your feet behind both ears, the elephant starts to move forward.

By tapping behind the ear opposite the direction you want to go -- and with an occasional cry of “benn” -- you can steer your elephant left or right.

Should you need him to pick up something with his trunk and pass it up to you (a tool or a shoe, for example), “geb bon” usually does the trick.

I have to give props to Kay for this. It was all her idea.

Sitting back in our family room in Raleigh, pondering activities for our two-month odyssey, the idea of visiting an elephant camp had sounded kind of corny to me. It conjured up images of elephants exploited for the sake of tourists and seemed (at the time, at least) like a tremendous distraction from my more erudite goal of exploring the economies of Southeast Asia.

“Well, if we’re going to Thailand, I want to go to elephant camp and learn how to be a mahout,” Kay had announced.

“Umm, okay,” I replied, not really paying much attention and hoping she would soon forget all about it.

If worse came to worst, I figured we'd spend a few hours, bored and watching elephants at some tourist trap, and that would be the end of it.

The elephant camp adventure, however, turned out to be far more complex, and far more interesting, than I could ever have expected.

Rather than a few hours of time, a few days were required.

And the camp was not at some mere tourist destination. It was at the “Thai Elephant Conservation Center,” home to “Royal Elephant Stables” (and if you know anything about Thailand, you know the word “royal” is never used lightly). This was also the home of the world-renowned elephant artists, who paint pictures (quite satisfactory ones, actually) with their trunks.

And we wouldn't be sitting in a bandstand watching elephants perform. We would be riding solo on them, guiding them through their shows.

On arrival at the camp in the mountains above Chiang Mai, we were each assigned our own elephant and issued our own “mahout suits” to wear while we learned to ride and handle these giants.

I don’t know about you, but I had never in my life stood side-by-side to a full grown elephant and contemplated the reality of what I was facing.

Believe me, it is a sobering experience.

Elephants are almost twice as tall as you are.

You may weigh somewhere in the vicinity of one hundred to two hundred pounds. But your exact weight really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even remotely approach the 3 to 5 tons these amazing mammals can weigh.

You quickly realize that any chance you have of controlling one of these behemoths depends completely on its indulgence and willingness to be controlled.

And if you spend some time with one, you come to learn a couple of other things pretty quickly too. For example:

Elephants are remarkably graceful.

You might think of them as lumbering galoots stomping around the jungle, crashing into trees, and causing a ruckus, but you would be amazed at how naturally graceful they are.

Their feet are marvels of engineering. They deliver tons of force with each step. But an elephant can walk nimbly, foot over foot, across a single log. Its broad feet disperse weight in a way that makes its footsteps almost gentle. It makes little or no sound as it walks.

Elephants' trunks are astonishingly agile. They can pluck tiny objects from your hand. An elephant can take a seemingly endless supply of sugarcane from visitors, sticking some in its mouth, lodging pieces between its tusks for a second helping, and reaching out with its serpentine trunk for yet a third.

An elephant's skin is very dry and rough, with occasional bristly hairs sticking up here and there.

Elephants sweat only around their toenails.

Elephants are quite intelligent. They are one of only a handful of animals able to recognize their reflections in a mirror. And their reactions can be almost human-like. Contrast that to puppies that search behind a mirror for the playmate they think they see. Elephants are regarded as more intelligent than dogs.

And yes, it's true -- elephants never forget. We were told, matter of factly, about one mahout on staff at the camp who once did something to deliberately startle his elephant. It was a one-time occurrence that didn’t hurt the elephant, but the elephant knew the act was intentional, resented it, and held a grudge from that day on. He never let that mahout ride him again.

Kay was assigned to a middle-aged female elephant named Jon Daeng, which means “red moon” in Thai. I was assigned to a wise older elephant named Wassana, whose name means “destiny.” Wassana is in his fifties, good-natured, and has acquired a few scrapes on his forehead -- the result of battering a few trees.

Elephants like Jon Daeng and Wassana may be donated to the Conservation Center when they can no longer be cared for by their owners (the care and feeding of an elephant is not cheap) or when they become injured. The staff at the camp then adopt them and care for them for life. If they need medical care, there is even an elephant hospital on site.

Over the next two days, Kay and I learned how to mount, dismount and steer Jon Daeng and Wassana.

And trust me, when you spend any significant amount of time on top of elephant using your knees and feet to grip and steer him, your legs – especially your inner thighs – get a workout more grueling than any personal trainer could ever inflict.

We spent the night at the camp in a thatched cottage, sharing beers and delicious Thai cooking with our cabin mates, Rene and Monique, travelers from the Netherlands. They were on holiday and, with their one previous day of mahout training, were seasoned hands compared to us.

The air in the mountains around Chiang Mai is crystal clear and the stars are exceptionally bright. Standing on the path before our cottage, I could easily count all seven stars of the Pleiades.

We retired to bed early that night, and, as I lay on my cot, it seemed as if my leg muscles had recorded the rolling motion of Wassana’s gait earlier in the day and were replaying the memory as I drifted off to sleep.

Supat, who runs the program we were participating in, met us at the crack of dawn on our second day to go fetch our elephants from the forest. We were each paired with a full-time mahout and, together, campers and mahouts trekked out into the forested hills to locate our elephants and bring them back to camp.

Elephants spend the night in the forest. They are tethered for the night and don’t roam free (unless they decide they really want to -- as Jojo, one of the camp’s most mischievous elephants has been known to do). But fear not, they have plenty of room to graze. It is not uncommon to leave an elephant in a thick leafy patch of forest, only to return the next morning to find he has eaten himself a sizeable clearing.

Yet, even in such circumstances, the elephant himself is not always that easy to see. Elephants can be very quiet and still. You would never think it, but with a few trees or bushes beside them, they can render themselves more or less invisible.

We continued to practice with our elephants that morning, but I had to leave the camp early to get back to my fellowship meetings in Chiang Mai. Kay, however, stayed on to complete the course and perform with her elephant in one of the shows held daily for visiting schoolkids and curious tourists.

To learn more about the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, check out the website Supat has created. It should be obvious from the site that he and the staff hold the greatest affection for the elephants they care for. Go to http://www.changthai.com/.

And if you’re ever in northern Thailand pay them a visit.

Spend a few days there.

You won’t be disappointed.

(Note to Rene and Monique: Send us your email address so we can track you down when we decide to come bother you in the Netherlands.)