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In pursuit of the Indian elephant
By Carrie | February 4, 2008
In Thekkady, we were in desperate pursuit of elephants. As soon as we arrived, though, our driver recommended that we go take an elephant ride. I was quite surprised that Oak, Nirav, and I could fit on ONE elephant…. who Oak immediately gave the nickname “Stampy.” We learned that elephants make only two footprints because their back legs hit the exact same spots as their front legs. Tricky, no? After our ride we got to meet a baby elephant, who took a special liking to Oak and Nirav. Aaah, elephant love.
As fun as this experience was, we were ready to see elephants in their native habitat. The next day, we visited Periyar National Park. We arranged a “jeep safari and jungle trekking adventure.” The jeep picked us up at our hotel at 5 AM (seriously too early for me). We got in the jeep and began the hour long journey to the park entrance. It was freezing, even though we were quite bundled up. Luckily at the halfway point we stopped for some tea. About 3/4 of the way through the journey we entered the jungle portion, where we saw some sambar (indian deer) and a few birds from a distance. No elephants.
When we arrived at the pavilion, we ate breakfast (oh! More idli. The guy that was running the food show was hilarious.. he stood in front of the buffet saying over and over: “This idli, like indian rice cake. You try. If you like, you take more.” Seriously he said it like 60 times. He started saying it to us and saw Oak taking like 6 idlis… I said.. “I think he already knows he likes them.”). Then, off for the jungle trek. Our little guide guy tried so hard to find us some elephants, but all we found were lots of elephant poo piles. Oak even found one that had a mushroom growing out of it! How delicious. On the trek, a British family informed us that we had to go on the boat ride to see all the animals. Little did we know.
On our jeep ride home, though, we did see monkeys! They were pretty cute, but they were WAAY up in the trees, obviously hiding from us. I did get a good glimpse of one that had a black body with a white face.
That night we went on another hike in the dark. Supposedly, we were supposed to see the “animals eyes glowing.” However, the only thing we found was a disgusting spider and a white bird that we woke up by shining our flashlights on him. Poor thing. So, we turned in early with hopes that the boat ride the next morning would be our key to elephant-ness.
The next morning - another freezing venture, this time out on Periyar Lake. It is quite a pretty ride. We saw some more sambar and lots of birds, but apparently elephants are not morning creatures. I don’t blame them!
So, Stampy, you were the only elephant we saw in India. That’s OK though because you were very cute and I enjoyed how your ear was slapping me in the foot for our entire ride!
February 15th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
I think I would have really enjoyed this adventure that you took. It sounds awesome except for the dastertly time you had to depart!