Nepal -- Visitors Have A Ball With Elephant Polo

You don't have to be an athlete. In fact, you don't have to know the first thing about elephants - or polo. But with a sense of adventure, a modicum of effort and a well-funded savings account, you too can become a bona fide elephant-polo champion in Nepal.

Elephant polo?

The concept is very simple: Eight people (four on each team) sit on elephants, wield very long bamboo polo sticks and try to hit a regulation size polo ball through goal posts at either end of a grassy field.

Every year for the past 12 years, the World Elephant Polo Championships in Nepal's Royal Chitwan National Park has attracted a mix of international participants and thousands of native spectators.

Exclusive ranks

Last winter, I was initiated into the ranks of the very few who have played this unbelievable sport.

Looking for a vacation I wouldn't soon forget, I had contacted San Francisco adventure-travel company InnerAsia Expeditions. Jim Sano, InnerAsia president, said, "You could do the Silk Road in China, or maybe a Himalayan trek, but how about elephant polo? We send a team every year, and there are still a couple spots left."

My mind went wild with visions of lumbering elephants and polo players carrying long sticks set against a hazy backdrop of tall jungle foliage and chattering monkeys.

It would be an adventure - a $5,200 adventure. That price meant my next vacations would be tent-camping in the Cascades not far from my Seattle home, but I called Jim back: "OK, let's do it."

Our plane buzzed over the mountains from Kathmandu, Nepal's capital, and descended onto the Meghauli airstrip in the jungle.

The sharp, snowy peaks of the Himalayas towered 200 miles to the north. The arid plains of India spread out to the south. I pondered the quest for Buddhist enlightenment that seemed to permeate the country. Several gentle elephants waited on the field below.

Let the games begin. . . .

Standing on the green playing field, I looked the elephant right in the eye. He was, after all, kneeling down and offering his hind leg as a step to his bamboo saddle. Suddenly I felt a little sorry for him, a grand beast humbled in what was obviously a sport of pure human excess.

But I grabbed the rope strapped under his tail and climbed up, comforted in knowing that part of the proceeds from the tournament would go to Nepal's national parks to help stop the poaching which threatens the magnificent tigers and one-horned rhinos.

The games were the brainchild of James Manclark, British horse-polo player, and Jim Edwards, owner of Tiger Tops Jungle Lodge. They drew friends and polo acquaintances for the first games at Tiger Tops in 1981, giving birth to the World Elephant Polo Association.

Every year since, the Tiger Tops lodge in Royal Chitwan has been the site of the event. The players are a monied crowd which typically includes international horse-polo players, corporate executives, celebrities and world travelers, in a setting of jungle and poverty.

From my perch, I squinted into the sun and looked down toward teammate Sandy Centifanti, a stockbroker from Columbus, Ohio. We were dressed in compulsory red and purple team polo shirts, white riding pants that had an incredible way of exaggerating our imperfect bodies, tall black riding boots and purple pith helmets.

She offered me a selection of wobbly polo sticks, and I grabbed one. My Nepali driver, called a "mahout" (pronounced ma-hoot), steered my elephant onto the field.

Outrageous and ironic

In both theory and practice, in fact, the entire event is outrageous and ironic. Every morning Nepali elephant handlers decorated the elephants with pink, white and blue chalk like roving gray cultural billboards.

Cows wandered over the field during play breaks, and ragged children sucked sugar cane on the sidelines while players giggled over cocktails under brightly colored team tents.

Nevertheless, from the moment referee Chuck McDougal yelled "Ready!" and dropped the first ball into the center ring from atop his elephant, it was nearly impossible not to get swept up in the spirit of competition.

Our team, the InnerAsia Crusaders, consisted of Sandy, Swiss travel executives Armin and Anne Schoch; Heidi Hettich, a Seattle printing professional; Kate Doty, staffer from InnerAsia Expeditions, and me - all of us beginners.

We would be pitted against teams organized by J&B Rare Whiskey, Bavaria Munich International, Tiger Tops Jungle Lodge, Nepal's National Parks, the British Gurkhas and GSG Hathi Sathi, an assemblage of ex-Gurkhas.

Each elephant played a designated position, one through four, in two 10-minute halves called "chukkas," with a 20-minute break in between. We quickly found a little team strategy could go a long way.

As our first opponents, the team sponsored by J&B Rare Whiskey ably demonstrated the concept behind elephant-polo strategy. Sporting bright yellow shirts and custom-made riding boots, they whacked and passed and smartly directed their mahouts, the Nepalis who managed the elephants.

Speaking only Nepali, or pretending to, our mahouts refused to respond to our frantic English-language instructions. We whacked and whiffed and pitched divots from the turf.

I struggled through our first two games, playing goalie. Being goalie meant that I got the biggest elephant.

Since the smaller, faster elephants were used in key offensive positions, common theory held that the big elephants would intimidate the smaller ones into slowing down as they neared the goal.

Theory and reality

Theory, however, doesn't always translate to reality. And cultures collided as I tried to direct my Nepali-speaking mahout. He whacked our elephant on the head with a two-foot bamboo stick, prompting it to amble forward three steps and stop. It swished the ground with its trunk and snorted.

This wasn't going to be easy. Winning wasn't everything, but maintaining a little pride would be nice.

By the time the third game came around, things finally picked up. Team captain Armin Schoch, feeling confident as we led the struggling Hathi Sathis, put me in an offense position. Hundreds of Nepali onlookers now lined the field. I sat nervously atop my gray mount, secretly hoping the ball wouldn't come to me - but that I'd make the game-winning play.

The referee dropped the ball. There was a fierce clacking of sticks, and the ball popped from the fray. A Hathi Sathis elephant charged. I gripped my too-loose lap rope for dear life, leaned onto my right stirrup, held onto my pith helmet and glasses and flailed my two-meter polo stick with my other hand as my mahout set us galloping toward the ball.

My elephant went trunk to trunk with one of the Hathi Sathis' elephants. Our sticks twisted and bent as they hit the ground. I pushed at the ball, knocking it directly under one of our opponent's elephants. More elephants arrived, and the ball was lost in a sea of elephant legs.

Finally sighting the ball, I leaned and swiped again. The tangle of trunks and tusks and legs made it difficult to make much headway, but finally an anonymous stick managed to send the ball skipping downfield. Heidi, waiting strategically near the goal, doggedly intercepted. She swung. Score! We'd managed to win both the game and the astonished respect of our peers, and I'd managed to salvage a little of the athletic ego I'd arrived with.

In the end, J&B posted an impressive winning streak to secure first place, becoming the first independent team ever to win the championship, and J&B Chairman James Bruxner accepted the trophy from Her Royal Highness Princess Jotshana of Nepal.

To everyone's surprise we secured fifth place in the competition, carrying home trophies of heavy bronze ash trays molded from an impression of a tiger's paw. Saddle bruises and gamey smell

I was glad the adventure was over. The saddle bruises on my thighs and the gamey elephant smell that penetrated my clothes signaled that it was time to return to the real world.

But the bronze tiger-paw ashtray on my coffee table, inscribed "WEPA 1993," will attest that for four hot days one winter, I was an elephant-polo champion. ----------------------------------------------------------------- MORE INFORMATION

You won't find the World Elephant Polo Championships in most guidebooks, and the games aren't widely publicized outside Asia. InnerAsia Expeditions can provide information on the polo games and Asia trips: Contact the company at 2627 Lombard Street, San Francisco, CA, 94123. Phone: (415) 922-0448.

Many other companies also offer treks and other trips in Asia: Consult a travel agent and publications such as the "Specialty Travel Index" or "Outside" magazine.

Guidebooks - A useful guidebook to the area is "Royal Chitwan National Park - Wildlife Heritage of Nepal," by Hemanta R. Mishra and Margaret Jefferies (Mountaineers, $18.95.) Another good guide is the "Nepal Handbook," by Kerry Moran (Moon Publications).

Beyond polo - Within the park, a visit to Royal Chitwan's Gharial Project, a refuge and preservation center for endangered crocodiles, is definitely worth the bouncy Range Rover ride.

Elephant safaris, guided walks through the jungle, and Tharu village tours are readily available at many park lodges (which range from luxurious to mud-wall basic).

Melanie Wilhoite is a Seattle freelance writer.