I’m treading softly and carrying sugar canes as I follow my guide through the jungle of Thailand’s Golden Triangle towards the Mekong river.

There are snakes and insects here which will bite or sting. But it is not these creatures on which I plan to deploy my bamboo-like sugar canes. My quarry this morning is much larger and, with any luck, will not be in an aggressive mood. The sugar canes are in case some bribery is needed.

I am going to become a mahout, to learn to drive an elephant. We trek along overgrown jungle paths towards the river where the elephants have slept. This is all part of the Anantara Resort and Spa’s 160-acre grounds. It’s located near the historic town of Chiang Saen in the heart of the hill country where Burma, Laos and Thailand converge and where the Mekong river forms a natural border.

My mount today is 59 years old. She spent most of her life working in the logging industry until the Thai government banned logging in 1989. She eyes me up suspiciously as she is led back to the mahout’s camp for her morning bath.

Bathtime over, instructions given, it is time for me to board my pachyderm. The mahouts make it look easy. You give a command and the elephant lifts its front leg, which you then use as a step to scramble up and sit on the neck. You use your feet to give the right signals. Kick gently behind the left ear and the elephant turns right; at least, that’s the theory. Wiggle your legs up and down and it goes into reverse; kick behind both ears and it goes forward.

An hour or so of practice and it almost stops being terrifying at all – provided you can forget you are sitting about three metres up in the air balanced on top of a beast weighing several tons.

Later, after an elephant-back tour of much of the resort, I am feeling quite confident, so confident that when we arrive back I decide to abandon the recommended method of dismounting and copy that used by the macho mahouts. I slide up onto my elephant’s head and then attempt to slide down its trunk.

I still have the scars.

How to get there

Jeff Mills travelled with Carrier (0161 491 7630; www.carrier.co.uk ). They have seven-night holidays to Thailand from £2,875 per person including return flights, transfers, and the mahout course and elephant trekking