Remember that party you went to that one night in college? You didn't really want to go out but you'd rather suck it up than to hear your friends say one more time, "Are you gonna waste the best years of your life by sitting here alone reading?" You saunter to the car with low expectations hoping the night will end soon enough to get back to that silent room. Upon arrival you hear the lame overplayed radio dubstep music and the chatting coming from the backyard of the stereotypical deteriorating college house, fit with the classic beer bottle collection and posters of half naked girls on the walls. You find yourself planning your escape already; looking for the nearest exits and thinking of an excuse that could get you in the nearest cab and on your way home to that book you left dogeared on the bed. All while your friends have collected shot glasses and enough alcohol to subdue a civil war soldier awaiting amputation, and that's how you'll feel the morning after too, like your limbs have been cut but you're still experiencing the pains of infection. You'll have glimpses of the night before as if they were a dream you meant to remember. And with these scenes, full of skipped minutes and questionable decisions, the only word you'll have to describe such a night is a word that sums everything and nothing; WEIRD.
The India-Pakistan Border Closing Ceremony is equally confusing as this night in college you remember and all-together don't remember. And with the only word I have to describe this event I'll tell you that it was weird, very weird.
We had just gone to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, a beautiful and very important site for Sikhism, the main religion in India's northern region of Punjab. Here, thousands of visitors and believers flock to pay homage to God and the 10 Gurus of the Sikhist faith. I was very tired and upon hearing we were to go next to the border I sauntered to the car with low expectations hoping it would end soon enough to get back to an airconditioned room.
The Golden Temple
The line! In the heat!
So we stopped at the edge of India's border and had to pass through an inspection where men went through first and women were stopped and inspected throughly (Sari's are apparently excellent for hiding weapons). It took us more than 30 minutes to cross so it was no surprise that waters, ice cream, tiny plastic Indian flags as well as face painting were all available before entrance to the border. "What is this?" I thought, "Are we going to a border or a circus?" Turns out it was some monster combination of the two that quickly turned into the weirdest party of the year.
We cross the border and come to a giant crowd where people are pushing to get to the front. Music and chanting can be heard and above the heads of strangers there are two large rising sets of bleachers like that of a football stadium. The noise sounded no different than that of football fans at a rival game, whooping and hollering like a Raiders Booster Club.
The Closing Ceremony opened with the strangest things I've ever seen. Men and women came down from the crowd and started running huge Indian flags from one side of the long center street to the border gate that closed India from Pakistan with music and chanting bellowing from some unknown source. From our seat we could see beyond the gate where two more sets of bleachers were full of Pakistani border-goers, waving tiny plastic Pakistan flags and face paint. They were a reflection of the Indian audience, from a birds eye view you would see two hoards arriving at the same party but cheering for opposite sides, separated by a single line of walled metal, a gate dividing two countries. So the competition grew; Whose music is louder? Whose participants happier? Whose people have more national pride?
Photo Credit Rebecca Weeks
The guards, with their huge fanned red hats, set out whistling at the heavy bleachers packed with people, motioning them to sit, or stand or be in the right section. But when they could whistle no more they quit and let the joy and nationalism that took over the crowd to come over them as well. They turned up the music and what happened next felt like a something I made up but truly am not clever enough...a dance party. Herds of Indian kids and teens as well as women unbelieving they were past their prime came to dance in the center of the street. Soon we joined too, not knowing the music but enjoying the beat.
After a while whistles blew and we were scooted back to our seats, for the ceremony was to begin. And this is where it gets weird...really weird. The red soldiers start off by showing the audience their high kicks. Yes, their high kicks. How they recruit for high kickers I'll never know but these guys kicked like their lives depended on it. "We'll show those Pakistani," I imagine them saying, "I want the best high kicker in all of India!"
The audience awed at those kicks and the soldiers, now boosted with confidence, ran to the opened gate like gazelles and did a high kick to the mirroring Pakistani soldier. It felt like a scene out of Monty Python where the Knight's Who Say Ni determine their rank by how high they can get their legs without them falling off. And so it went, five different soldiers proving their might and leaping to the border. All while the Pakistani hollered and shouted for their high kickers.
What's high kicking without some agressive eyeballing? Photo Credit The Telegraph
Looks more like a dance! Can, Can, can you do the Can Can can you do the Can Can!
So you'd think that'd be it, but it wasn't. Next there began a new competition between the Pakistan and Indian soldiers. It was not one of physical strength or mental ingenuity but of the cords set in the throats of men. Who can belt the loudest for the longest? Yep. On either side into a microphone men lifted an "AH" sound out of their diaphragms and into the audience, their voices carrying all the way across a border to a different people. The might of a country was dependent upon how long a single note was sung.
Known across the country for their meticulously manicured masculine mustaches the red guard of the Indian border takes its tune projection just as seriously. Photo Credit Maniac World
The ceremony ended with the folding of the flag and singing from each side that reminded me of a high school sports game, "We want a batter not a broken ladder," I imagine them taunting.
"Hindustan! Pakistan! Hindustan! Pakistan!", each crowd would yell.
Photo credit: Ben Tubby
And in the morning I felt like I had drank large quantities of alcohol and made the whole thing up. Only something so strange could come from my drunken encounters or dreamy hallucinations. But through the piecing together of this party on the India-Pakistan border, full of dancing and high kicks, the only word I have to describe such a night is a word that sums up everything and nothing; WEIRD.
Elephants seem to be everybody's favorite animal and it's no surprise, these tall majestic creatures with their wet wide eyes and wrinkled trunk that reaches like an arm searching in the dark is as adorable as it is astounding.
When traveling to Asia it is common to see "Ride an elephant" on many bucket lists. But as travelers hoping borders and spending money in new places it's important to know exactly what kind of tourist organizations you're supporting. In developing countries this is even more crucial; the tourist techniques they learn now will expand in the decades after.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ELEPHANT CAMPS
As an avid animal lover I was very wary of these camps set up all around Thailand and especially in the north that offer elephant rides, have elephants painting pictures and doing tricks all for the cheers of Western tourists. What these wide eyed newcomers don't know sitting in the crowd is that they are supporting a hundred year old practice of elephant training that is abusive, cruel and absolutely immoral.
Every elephant working in Thailand, whether he's giving rides at a Hill Tribe Trek or in a camp has gone through what "mahout" (elephant trainers) call the "Phajaan" or "crushing". When the elephant is 3-5 years old they are taken from their mother and with the brutal help of a dozen people are crammed inside a bamboo box. For 3-7 days (however long it takes) the elephant is poked with bamboo posts with nails fixed to the bottom. They are forced to finished a series of tricks; putting their foot inside a rope or grabbing a stick. They are beaten until bloody if they do not do the trick or do it incorrectly. The process is to make the elephant subservient and submissive and through these inhumane tactics, it works. The elephant has been broken and will live the rest of it's life in fear of consequences. He will be cut and beaten often at the hand of the Mahout. There are no words to describe the pain and fear that these elephants go through during their life.
WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC ANIMAL ABUSE
THE CONTRADICTION
Elephants are everywhere here in Thailand. Regarded as a symbol of prosperity, you can't walk down the street without seeing an elephant in some form. Thailand's elephants very literally built these cities. They were used for thousands of years in the logging company until 1992 when it was banned because of deforestation. Elephants during this time endured an incredible amount of abuse, leading to a 90% decline of wild elephants in Thailand. After the ban, it did not get better for the elephants. They were either abandoned to starve and die, had their tusks cut for ivory products that lead to infection and sometimes death or paraded into the busy streets of cities for tourists.
THE MENTALITY
Many Thai's are themselves ignorant of these issues. In class when asking my Thai professor about these issues he explained that Thai's are largely Buddhist and in Buddhism sentient beings, like elephants, are not to be harmed. He said these camps would not abuse elephants because they view them as very spiritual creatures. The facts still stand against this. The elephant didn't poke himself with a nailed bamboo stick, he didn't cut off his own trunks to sell and he didn't flee from his family in the wild to endure a life of abuse at the hands of humans.
The biggest issue it that working elephants in Thailand are not classified as endangered species. Under law, they are categorized as livestock and there are no laws against harming or killing livestock. In addition, Thailand does not enforce many of the illegal ivory trades that still function today. These elephants have no rights. They are bought, traded, abused, abandoned and killed without one blink from the government. Logging is also still legal in neighboring Myanmar which causes issues in Thailand where elephant smuggling has developed.
THE SOLUTION
However, there are a handful of people in Thailand who have dedicated their lives to relieving the terrible plight of the Asian elephants.
A tiny Thai woman by the name of Lek, has started an organization called Elephant Nature Park that rescues working elephants from around Thailand in order to give them a better home, care for their wounds and give them the love they need and deserve. It is a 360 acre haven for the abused. Elephants wander through the grassy fields, take mud baths and bathe in the river. Slowly, Lek is teaching them to forage for themselves.
There are no rides, no tricks and no shows. The way it should be.
Here, visitors, short-term and long-term volunteers participate by feeding the elephants, meeting them and learning their story and finally getting to help bathe them in the river. It's based around education and feeling like you're helping even if all your doing is not harming. There are over 30 elephants rescued by Lek and her small team.
At Elephant Nature Park the elephants roam free!
We met many elephants that had a very sad past. This poor little orphaned guy was left to starve for three days when his mom was shot and killed by locals who found her eating rice crop
This elephant is a victim of a landmine and is still recovering through the extraordinary veterinary care they have at the park.
This beautiful lady has two broken back legs and a broken back. She was rescued from an illegal logging group in Thailand. She was beaten until she she would work.
This angel was rescued from begging on the city streets
Lucky worked in the circus for 30 years and has become blind due to the circus' spotlights.
I am so happy they are here now but wish they never had to experience such terrible things at the hands of humans. Meet the other herd members and read about how they came to the park. http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/herd/index.htm
WHAT YOU CAN DO
1. Don't buy legal or illegal ivory products
2. Do not support elephants on the streets parading for food
3. Know that any institution or Mahout that allows riding of elephants, tricks or a show has abused the elephant by inducing it to "spirit breaking"
3. Support institutions that serve elephants and fight against the abuse
4. Do your research! Places will call it a "sanctuary" but it's really a camp where they train the animals by inhumane methods
4. Educate others!
THE RIGHT THINGS TO DO FOR ELEPHANTS IN CHIANG MAI
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