Where the Elephant Catchers Go to Die by David Clement Davies

The cemetery of Ban Don village in western Vietnam is still where the elephant catchers go to die. But it is hardly a stirring testament to a once mighty tradition. The mournful wooden graves poke through the jungle like broken down latch gates. Only the fading inscription on Ma Trong's tomb trumpets their illustrious past.

Ma Trong - Chief of the M'nong and Grand Chief of the tribes of Dac Lac, it says, Chevalier of the Legion D'honneur, Official of the Royal Dragon of D'annam, Knight of the White Parasol and the Order of a Million Elephants.

Impressive. Ma Trong died in 1947, a year after the start of the Franco-Viet Minh war. When elephants were the true kings of the forests that stretched right across the Dak Lak plateau and into Cambodia, the villagers of Ban Don were kings among the elephant catchers.

Ma Trong had an even more famous uncle, named R'thu. In an age when the trees still protected his people, R'thu probably had no need of all the colonial name calling. He was simply known as Kimjunop - King Elephant. R'thu founded Ban Don in the middle of the 19th century, taught the villagers to catch elephants and lived to the venerable age of one hundred and ten.

"Oui, Monsieur," said a toothless old woman, pointing through the palms and white coffee flowers towards a longhut and the home of an elephant catcher.

Just two days before he had caught an elephant. The M'nong used to catch, if not millions, then certainly hundreds of elephants across the ravishing hills that ruck towards Cambodia.

The M'nong, like the Ede, the Tai and the Nung, are Montagnards, mostly hill people and one of Vietnam's numerous minorities. They are also among some of the country's poorest inhabitants. Though their traditions seem to be gaining some protection, the Vietnamese still treat them as an oddity and a source of cash. The official Tourist office in Ban Don village carefully fields the dollars and the visitors who come here to ride elephants, watch elephant races and photograph the festival on March 26.

The master of the house wasn't at home but we didn't have to look far. At first it was a thrilling and then a pitiful sight. The baby elephant shifted nervously and strained at the chain that tied her to a tree, as I stroked her forehead. The wound on her hind leg, where she had been shot with an arrow to weaken her, was raw and livid and she kept trying to sit painfully on her haunches.

For the right price, as well as races and two day Safaris, the Tourist Office will organise an elephant hunt for you, though there is no guarantee of catching one. Sometimes it can take two months, sometimes only a day. The M'nong no longer hunt large wild elephants. It is too dangerous, and after eight the elephant is difficult to train. Nor will they chase elephants younger than three, because it is hard and costly to get them to take milk.

Before tourism the M'nong used elephants for hauling wood, for logging and for the hunts. They have always been a key to status and wealth. A young Asian elephant can pull 500 kilos at a go and comfortably shift 5 tonnes a day. There are about 50 domestic elephants in Ban Don district today, 18 working in the village, and tourism seems to direct most of the traffic. Though the hunter who caught the baby would have no truck with tourists - he thought it would bring him bad luck.

Kham Sing was waiting for us by the tourist office, at the edge of the swirling coffee brown Sarapok river. An elephant lives about as long as a man, and at 16, Kham Sing was barely an adolescent. But his Nai, his driver, scoffed at the idea he would have any trouble carrying two of us. To confirm the fact another great, double-domed head, sprouting with hairs bristling like a porcupine, came swaying down the path. A family of five Vietnamese was perched on his back, waving a video camera at the long huts.

For the M'nong, the days of Kimjunop have long gone. When the French first came here in 1899 they had to retreat again in the face of an impossible terrain and hostile tribes. Now, right across Dak Lak, are the signs of Vietnamese progress; towns and schools, metalled roads, the noisy provincial capital of Buon Ma Thuot. In another elephant village, Buon Juan, also on the tourist trail by the lovely Lak lake south east of Ban Don, the number of working animals has dwindled to four and the Vietnamese have begun to restrict logging with severe penalties. The M'nong here don't hunt elephants anymore but buy them from Laos if they can. At 40 Million Dong each, around 3000 US dollars, an animal can literally turn into a white elephant.

Yet remembering that baby elephant, I had mixed feelings. At least control of logging would be good news for the wild elephants. In Nam Cat Tien National Park, a new reserve, the forests also shield Rhino and Tiger. Plenty of wild elephants still roam between Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, following the monsoon and the flowering leaves that feed their gigantic appetites. If R'thu could see Ban Don village today and its crop of souvenir stalls, perhaps King Elephant would be spinning in his grave. Yet looking at Kam Singh's proud head under a glowing sunset, silhoutted against the burning red earth, you can't help thinking that there is still plenty of majesty left in the world.