Size Doesn't Matter

Photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman
fliesinyoureyes.com

Each morning and evening in Nepal’s Tiger Tops National Park visitors are permitted to ride elephants through the wetlands in search of tigers and rhinoceroses. All but one of the working Indian elephants are female, so Steve and I jumped at the chance to ride the 9000 pound male with enormous tusks. Weighing 3000 pounds more than his female counterpart, he is the largest animal in the park by a substantial margin.

African elephants, whose large ears are shaped like their native continent, are bigger than their Indian cousins but cannot be domesticated. Indian elephants have small ears that are coincidentally shaped like India and have been used for thousands of years for lifting, carrying, pulling, and pushing.

Handlers and passengers mount elephants differently. Drivers face the animal and while gently grasping the ears, stand on the tip of the trunk. With the appropriate command the trunk, which can lift 25% of the elephant’s body weight, sends the handler skyward. He sits on the back of the neck and places his bare feet behind the ears and guides the animal by exerting pressure to this sensitive area while uttering commands. Riders access the six passenger carriage in a more mundane manner. They simply climb to the top of a platform and step down into it.

Although the tiger population in Tiger Tops is robust, the camouflaged predator is difficult to spot among the bushes, elephant grass, and trees of the park. As this was our last evening at Tiger Tops, many of the guests were discouraged and elected to pursue other activities. Four of us decided to give it one more try.

While searching for tigers in the dense undergrowth, elephants constantly forage. Their trunks grab huge clumps of elephant grass or tree branches, tear them loose, and shove them into their mouth where their huge molars grind the matter to make it suitable for swallowing. Ironically, the chewing process eventually leads to the elephant’s demise. As the sixth and last set of molars wears away, the inability to masticate leads to malnutrition.

Even the short tempered rhinoceros gives an elephant wide birth, and an hour into the ride we saw many of them grazing or lounging in the water. The quiet was interrupted when our driver heard or saw something in a dense thicket and signaled to his partner who was guiding a female elephant with the other two passengers aboard. Intending to flush the prey, they entered the suspicious area as the elephant crushed everything in its path. We sat atop the imposing male elephant, blocking the escape route.

Suddenly, a snorting water buffalo with foam pouring from its mouth erupted from the bush and charged headlong toward us. Although out weighing the buffalo by 6500 pounds and towering five feet over him, the elephant was no match for his testosterone driven adversary. The normally plodding pachyderm instantly transformed into a cheetah, turned about, and sprinted in the opposite direction while leveling everything in its path. Fortunately, only one female elephant witnessed the display of cowardice, and once again was reminded that size doesn’t matter.