I went on a elephant ride with my family - wife and two young kids yesterday. The place is on the way to Munar’s most famous tourist spot, the Mattupetty dam. Paid Rs 350 per person for a 30 minute ride and the trail is pretty rough and steep.
The ride started off well, but soon it turned into an adventurous ride with a miraculous escape.Within few minutes after climbing the trail, elephant was not following the instructions from mahout and ran off the trail into the woods. When we were screaming, the mahout told us that the elephant has smelled something and has got scared. We were panicking as he was neither following us nor gave us any instructions on what to do next.
As the elephant was squealing I jumped off its back and ran to get some help. My wife helped the kids to hang on to tree branches and then jumped off the elephant as well as it was heading deeper into the woods. The owners claimed that this has never happened before and told us that this incident might have occurred as mahout normally takes care of the other elephant and this elephant didn’t want to take instructions from a new person.
May be this was a one-off incident, but what we learnt from this was never to leave kids alone on any raids(that was our original Plan) and to have an exit plan in case of emergencies. We were never prepared for this disaster and when things went wrong couldn’t figure out what do to get out and be safe. Mahouts should be given instructions to help visitors on how to escape in case of situation like this. Not sure whether we will take another elephant ride again!