Anantara Elephant Camp

When our eyes meet across a steamy forest clearing, it’s love at first sight. The 26-year-old beauty from the high north of Thailand has deep brown eyes, thick black lashes and truly impressive curves. As I proffer my introductory gift – a bunch of bananas – she shifts on her four sturdy legs, swishes her tail excitedly and extends her trunk in greeting. Lahwan is, of course, a three-ton Asian elephant.

Our dawn rendezvous takes place in the lush grounds of the elegant new Anantara Resort at Chiang Saen. First job of the day is to round up Lahwan and her three companions, who have spent the night foraging in the woods on 100-foot chains, and lead them back to the hotel’s own elephant camp. One by one I meet the stately Pangyom (at 59 the matriarch of the group), Tantawan (a little tetchy on account of a football-sized boil on her shoulder) and Pangsep (who formerly worked in a tin mine).

“The girls” seem refreshed, despite having had just four hours’ sleep (when you need to eat 300kg of food every day, an early start is essential). We stack their breakfast bananas and chop sugarcane as they splash and bellow their way through a welcome hosedown. As the hills of neighbouring Laos slowly rise from the Mekong mist, the scene takes on a surreal quality. It’s easy to feel envious of John Roberts, resident ranger and “Devon’s only qualified snake catcher”.

Four years living in bamboo huts in Asia have made not the slightest dent on John’s typically English modesty. Despite claiming to be a “bumbling amateur”, he can identify over 70 species of bird, along with just about everything else that crawls, sprouts and burrows on the 160-acre site. Where his beloved elephants are concerned, however, any reserve gives way to an infectious energy: When he’s not preparing a hot compress for the ailing Tantawan, he’s shovelling whatever needs to be shovelled and answering questions from enthralled guests. The elephants themselves, you feel, are happy to support his core task of educating visitors. Just as John is explaining about the 40,000 muscles that make their trunks so dextrous, Pangsep deftly seizes a twig and gives her ear a good scratch.

Not all of Thailand’s elephants are quite so lucky, of course. The 1989 ban on logging slowed the loss of natural habitats, but also rendered hundreds of animals and their keepers unemployed. The fortunate few at the Anantara camp are far more docile than the 1,500 still living in the wild, something for which I’m grateful as I grab a handful of Lahwan’s leathery right ear, shout “sawngsoon” to raise her right leg, and scramble onto her broad back. It’s my turn to become a mahout (elephant driver).

Perched astride her neck, I waggle my feet behind her giant pink ears, the signal to pad silently forward with a hypnotic, swaying rhythm. Before long I’m so lost in fantasies of traversing the Alps that I don’t notice Lahwan has stopped responding to my commands and is lazily munching at a bamboo tree. Like all elephants, this one is highly sensitive and knows full well I’m faking it. I try to steer her back onto the path, but without conviction. Then she rips down a thick branch with terrifying ease, reminding me who’s really in charge. It seems we’re not made for each other after all.

That evening, I return to the camp in pitch blackness, half-expecting to catch the real mahout watching DVDs or eating takeaway pizza. Instead I find them seated around a campfire, picking out traditional songs on a four-stringed shung. I’m soon aglow with a sense of natural harmony only partly explained by their curious herbal whisky. Somewhere off in the darkness, there’s a crash as Pangyom collides with a tree. In just a day, I’ve developed a mammoth appreciation of Asian elephants, and of those caring for them at the Anantara camp.