Elephant safari and bathing

This weekend I took a break from my strenuous volunteer work (yes, that's sarcasm you sense) and traveled about an hour down the road to a town called Sauraha. It's known for it's National Park, where elephants, bears, rhinos and tigers lurk in the lush vegetation. My travel companions included Rim (Lebanon), Emily (Australia), Nichole (Switzerland), and Evo (Germany). We had a fabulous time. I was stoked just to have a hot shower at the hotel, after going 5 days without one. We did an elephant safari through the jungle and found ourselves a wild rhino. It's a little intimidating coming face to face with a rhino, even if you are on top of an elephant. But amazing, nonetheless.




The rhino we ran into



Us 4 in the elephant basket

Crossing crocodile infested waters

There was also an option to give an elephant a bath. In actuality, the elephant gives YOU a bath! It's so amazing to be on such a magnificient creature, but the elephants were treated so poorly that it was hard to enjoy towards the end. This made me feel guilty for being any part of this. The mahout's have a steel poker than they use on the elephants. While I was doing the elephant bath, the mahout next to me hit his elephant in the head and it let out a scream. You can actually hear it on the end of my video above, and see my look of horror that follows it. This scared me so much that I asked to get off my elephant. I told him to stop hitting his elephant. I know how elephants can be. They frequently go haywire and there is a long history at this park of tourist deaths every year from this. I feel so bad for the elephants, being mistreated their entire lives. I'm already skittish around these giant creatures, after being charged by a wild elephant while in India. (I'll tell you about that another time).

Me and Emily

elephant bath

All in all it was a fun weekend spent with good company. On the ride home, we all rode on TOP of the bus, as the locals do. We are so cool :)


On top of the bus