I met Muni during one of our breaks from camel riding. Muni has thoughtful eyes with beautiful long lashes. She is a hard worker putting in eight hour days and only taking days off when there is no work. She's a bit on the heavy side, weighing in at 6,600 pounds. Muni is an elephant that works at the Amber Fort in Jaipur. She takes tourists the 1 kilometer ride from the fort entrance up a switchback road to the inside of the fort. Then she waits to take her tourists back down. She makes this round trip two to three times a day. The cost for the ride is 450 rupees ($10 USD).

After taking the standard tourist ride to and from the fort, I decided to try something a little different. First, I enlisted the help of Kahn, a local taxi driver who speaks fluent English. We then drove to the Amber Fort near the end of the day. The elephants were finished working and some were in a holding area where they were munching sugar cane, their version of a coffee break. We went up to one of the mahouts (elephant drivers) and asked if he was ready to go home. Yes. Then I asked if I could go with him. I explained I wanted to learn more about the elephants. He said yes.

Sirkahn, the mahout, said Muni is one of about 100 elephants in the state of Rajasthan. Sirkahn started working with elephants when he was ten. He learned from his father, who learned from his grandfather. Rather than mount the elephant like a tourist from a platform at elephant-back level, Muni kneeled down and I planted a foot on her knee, grabbed an ear, and hoisted myself onto her platform-like saddle. Sirkahn remained on the ground as Muni stood up. He uses voice commands to control her movements. She knows about 20 commands including sit down, sleep, and pick up anything that has been dropped from her back. So while Sirkahn walked alongside, we started down the highway with cars, buses, and trucks sharing the road. Muni ignored their honking and ambled along at her own pace. Most drivers in this area are used to seeing the elephants on the roadway, but when they noticed me sitting alone on top, they would stare and maybe wave.

Muni has a rocky gait. You can feel the impact on every step. Sitting on the palan (saddle) is like riding a ship at sea. At one point, we picked up the pace to catch up with several other elephants. Trying to jot down several notes in my notebook was similar to doing the same thing while driving over a road with potholes.

Eventually, Sirkahn climbed aboard by running up Muni's trunk, grabbing her ears, and hoisting himself up. He explained that Muni came from Assam, a jungle in India. It takes about 3 years to train an elephant. Muni is a pro at the tourist trade at 35 years of age. She eats about 90 pounds of food a day, including sugar cane, potatoes, chapatti (bread), and corn. She drinks 60 liters of water a day.

Sirkahn has four elephants. One is a big tusker. This pachyderm workforce earns him about 5 lak (500,000 rupees) a year. Two lak go toward feeding and upkeep of the elephants. Any veterinarian work is taken care of by the handlers who have their own traditional remedies for healing elephant ailments.

We turned down a side street and I asked if we could stop at a food stand. There I bought a kilo of bananas, which were handed up with an elephant hook. We then passed down narrow streets to Muni's home. She lives in a stone-walled enclosure. The floor is made of stone with a tilt that allows urine and elephant poop to drain easily. It was all swept clean when we arrived. Muni's front and hind legs were chained to bolts in the rock floor. Sirkahn's young children crowded around me and Muni on our arrival. They treated her as we would treat a family pet. Once, when Sirkahn accidentally dropped a coin, one of his children, about 6 years old, nonchalantly walked under Muni to retrieve the coin. All this time, Muni's trunk had been casually searching my body. She got some elephant boogers on my shirt as she tried to sniff the bananas behind my back. Then she got her treat. I slid bananas onto her surprisingly smooth tongue. I think she was in elephant heaven as she swallowed the bananas, peel and all.

Next, kids working.