WILD ELEPHANTS!!!!!!
At first it sounded like distant musket fire as the bamboo stems snapped off to be eaten. (Not to be confused with the actual gunfire of a hunter in the distance). As they got closer it sounded more like an erratic small steamroller coming through the forest. Cracksnapwhoomsnapcrackbangsnap, pause. We could identify 4 sets of noises, which meant at least 4 elephants.
While we watched the sun set behind distant hills, flaming apricot in a pale sky, we listened to the sounds gradually moving from south west to north west. One of the local guides indicated that they often make a loop round like this to end up at the stream and salt lick below the tower. After a delicious dinner cooked by the guides, we sat and listened as darkness fell and the elephants gradually came closer. Suddenly, about 8pm, there was a 'swoosh!" in the darkness by the stream that had us all straining our eyes to see through the moonless night. (Bad planning there!) One of the elephants had decided it was bath time.
They walk so quietly that we didn't hear it arrive. For about half an hour we listened with excitement to the succession of sploshing, sloshing and spraying that sounded just like an elephant in the bath, before it moved to another part of the slope to eat the salty sand and throw it on it's back. I could just see it outlined against the pale river sand as the elephant used its trunk to throw clouds of sand into the air. Eventually it was a silver elephant in the dim starlight silently drifting off into the forest.
Although we could still hear other elephants in the distance, the guides indicated that we should settle down for some sleep, as it was going to be a broken night for us... We tucked ourselves up into the sleeping bags and listened to the breaking bamboo lullaby.
A few hours later I was awakened by a loud and primeval scream. Wooo! I was out of my bag and leaning over the tower in a flash, and saw an elephant come down the path to the tower, and disappear underneath. I moved to the top of the stairs (the bottom half of which are raised horizontal by a pulley at night) and the guides pointed to the elephant stood under the tower with his trunk raised investigating the steps. He didn't seem happy and the guides later said that he had just chased off a younger male. Whatever it was, he was pretty upset. I have never seen an elephant have a tantrum from close quarters before, and it is pretty scary. We could see him dimly while he wrecked havoc around the tower. He ripped up trees, broke branches, squealed, trumpeted and made mock charges around the tower. I was worried that he was going to charge one of the concrete legs of the tower and hurt himself, but they are made with short metal spikes, which it seems the elephants understand well enough, because he spend several minutes bending some of them over. The first version of the tower was pushed over and destroyed by the elephants - so lessons have been learned! They are huge, powerful animals, and you really, really, don't want to get in their way. A local villager was killed in 2005, and part of the money we paid goes to a compensation fund for damage to crops and people.
I now realise why elephants 'trumpet'. He sounded exactly like a manic 3 year old with a tin trumpet - there's no better description. At one point he picked up a small rock, but thankfully put it down again without throwing it. After spending quite a while giving the surrounding shrubbery a bashing, and thrashing branches around, he eventually flounced off into the darkness giving the occasional squeal.
After sleeping some more, a guide woke me up with a whispered 'saang baby'. I tiptoed over to the edge of the tower and directly beneath me were 2 females and a baby elephant! I hope the guides had not dropped food for them - forbidden, but something they are known to do. The elephants stayed there for some time, snorting and snuffling, but they could have been investigating where the male elephant had been. A couple of times the biggest one - she was absolutely huge - went off a few metres and we could just sense the 'rumble in the jungle', the infrasound communication elephant use over long distances. It is mostly undetectable by humans, but sometime we could feel it - very uncanny.
They stayed and mooched about before going for a bath and salt lick - more elephantine sloshing and spraying. I never realised that elephants seem to enjoy blowing bubbles under the water - a big gurgling wwwhhhhoooossshhh! that I recognised from my elephant bathing experience. It was a shame not to see what the elephants were doing in the water - it sounded great fun, but it was just too dark. Eventually, they too disappeared off into the forest to the soundtrack of feeding destruction. We went to sleep with huge grins, and for me, a lingering undercurrent of sadness that the days of these utterly magnificent lords of the forest are numbered.
It was an amazing experience, one that really brought home to us the immense privilege of seeing these animals in their natural state, and that they are likely to be extinct in our lifetime. The tame elephants were fantastic and beautiful, but the 'saang paa', the wild elephants, are surrounded by a blaze of glory I have never experienced before. I am glad that the money we spent will help protect them and make it possible for the local villages to survive the considerable destruction that the elephants wreck on their farms.