December 30, 2010
Abraham is such a rip-roaring, charismatic, confident kid that he always surprises us when he gets scared. He refused to ride the elephant at first, announcing he'd stay back with our guide. Then, he'd only ride with me in the elephant riding seat. He talked often about how the elephant might drop us or he might fall. He watched Alice confidently slip in front of her mahout (human who teaches and drives the elephant) on top of the elephant's neck to ride on the actual elephant. Our mahout offered to do the same for Boom and he firmly refused.
Our mahout hopped off and helped urge forward Ken, Alice, and Griffin's slow-moving, 45-year-old elephant probably with arthritis, leaving us to ride our elephant with no one driving. So, I was forced to get on the elephant's head by myself to drive, at one point, although the mahout was really in command, yelling out "Pie Pie" to make our elephant, named Venn, move forward. Abraham refused to join me on the elephant's neck.
Finally, he slipped down and sat in front of me, talking a mile a minute, narrating the entire experience, eventually yelling "Pie Pie!" to the elephant to make him go faster. He loved the feel of the elephant's skin, and more so, of being in charge of an animal so much bigger than him.
In the end, Boom was reluctant to return to the elephant site, to hand over the reigns, or really the neck, to the mahout because we were about to take a tricky elephant trek through the river. At the end, Boom hugged his Dad, so proud that he was a mahout, himself, now.
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