And They Are Us
My guide/driver suggested a late afternoon elephant “safari” and I said, “why not.”
A safari is a jeep ride of any duration over a surface loosely termed a road in search of wildlife, in this case elephants.
The ride in the back of the open-topped truck was crashingly rough.
It quickly became apparent that the best strategy was to stand facing forward, legs spread as far apart as possible and to hang onto the crossbars in a largely vain attempt to absorb the shock and sway from the ruts and holes.
We meandered for over an hour through heavily forested groves with sightings of hawks and eagles but no elephants.
I thought something that big would be easy to spot.
I was wrong.
Finally, ahead, elephants were spotted.
And the stampede began.
The Stampede
A stampede of jeeps, I mean.
Elephant spotting is big business here, and that is good.
It took a while for folks to see their fill but then things sorted themselves out and there were, relatively speaking, elephants for all.
It was late evening and they were out for dinner, blissfully uncaring of the excitement they were causing as they munched away.
Turns out that elephant watching is quite a workout, to the tune of 600 mg of advil.
But very much worth the effort.