diary tags today about

a thing in 37 photos

elephant

3307 108 109 110 111

appears with…

!elephant trainer17
me13
meredith11
!banana10
!best3
!museum2
!river2
!us2
!circus1
!fuzzy1
!palm tree1
!squinty1
!statue1
!topiary1
!truck stop1
!wave1

elephant — Even if you go all the time, there's always more to see.

elephant — The animal stuff always makes me feel a little crummy...

elephant — Mer giving Lord Ganesh one last hug for good luck.

elephant — Oh, but what's that you say? Your grandma is more of a collector of tropical knickknacks? BAM!

elephant — Just kidding! Thanks again for the ride! Hope you enjoyed your bananas!

elephant — Yeah, that's right. I'm talking about you, freak.

elephant — Before we left, we stood there for a minute and marveled at her. I mean, would you just look at the crazy shape of her melon. I mean, just really stop for a minute and really look at that thing! Holy kee-rist on crutches! That thing is ridiculous! Can you believe that that's a real animal that walks around and puts entire bunches of bananas in its mouth at once with its giant nose that's like an arm but with a breathing straw in it? Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

elephant — Look how long and pretty and freckley (!!!) her trunk is!

elephant — FRONDS!

elephant — I didn't have any more bananas, but she was a good sport about it and even let me shake her trunk! (But that was probably only because her trainer held his stick up in the air and she knew she'd get a gentle whack in the head if she tried to get rough and sniffy with me.)

elephant — I CAN HAS MORE?

elephant — NOM*NOM*NOM.

elephant — It sounds silly, but I really can't convey how surreal it is to have an animal that big gently take something out of your hand with it's nose.

elephant — Here's her here little sniffer sniffing around for more bananas.

elephant — So nice.

elephant — Hahaha.

elephant — I think this one is my fave because it looks like she's smiling.

elephant — Look at me, I'm such a little trunk-toucher!

elephant — Then it was my turn! Meredith took my cam and did an awesome job capturing the following action sequence!

elephant — I totally broke my bunch of bananas in two because I wanted to experience the weirdness of feeling her sniff around my hand and then grab the bananas twice!

elephant — And repeat! (Look how happy she is here!)

elephant — Swallow. (I like how Meredith's gently petting the end of her nose here.)

elephant — ...then you chew then entire bunch at the same time...

elephant — ...then you use your trunk to place the entire bunch of bananas in your mouth...

elephant — After we got back to the camp, our trainer asked us if we wanted to feed our elephant and thank her for the ride! When we said yes, he walker her around a little fence thingy - so that she would get over excited about the food and accidentally trample us to death..

Here's a quick guide to elephant eating: First you reach out and grab the bananas...

elephant — Take two.

elephant — Obligatory "we're riding an elephant!" photo.

elephant — On the way back we passed a boy elephant with huge tusks! About halfway back to the camp, our guide stopped us and told us that he had to go into the forest to "get us a gift," but that he'd be right back. We were like "A gift? Holy shit! What kind of gift is he getting us in the forest???" Care to guess what it was?

elephant — Then, we mounted back up and it was time to head back to the camp.

elephant — After we'd finished cooling off, we went back over to the riding platform and we got to play with the elephant a little bit. She was so friendly and curious. She kept sending her trunk up to grab at our hands and sniff around. Getting touched and groped by a sniffy elephant's trunk is genuinely one of the weirdest and wonderfulest things I've ever experienced!

elephant — When you ride an elephant, you sort of sit on a bench-seat that's tied around the animal's back - but the driver, the driver sits right up on the head! It's totally shocking! It was really neat to watch the trainer get up there - he'd make a clicking sound while standing on the ground and the elephant would bend her knee and fashion a "step" so that the guy was able to climb on up!

elephant — Success! (Hahaha. This was the first time Meredith had been on an elephant and she was so excited!)

elephant — They walked our elephant under the big tower we were up in so that we could get onto her back without having to lean a ladder against her or something. Here's a pic I took of her fuzzy head while Meredith was climbing on!

elephant — ...and head our way. No matter how many times I've seen an elephant in real life, it never gets any less shocking. Every time I'm like, "Holy shit, that's a big animal!"

elephant — And then we headed back into the national park to visit an elephant conservation center! It sorta seems counter-intuitive, but the way they raise money for their cause is by selling elephant treks, where you get to go for like an hour ride on an elephant through the jungle. Here's us way up high in this tower watching the elephant that we're going to ride cross the river...

elephant — The museum is also filled with all sorts of huge dioramas that depict all sorts of epic battles of yore. (They used elephants as battle tanks! Elephants!)

elephant — An elephant-sized elephant bush!

a photo diary · online since december 1996