Elephant Back Safari

When in Africa the thing to do is to go on wildlife safaris. There are lots of different ways to do this. The typical way is in a 4X4 vehicle, you can walk, you can take a hot air balloon, you can ride horses, take a boat, or if you find the right place you can go on safari on elephant back!

Heidi and I were a little worried about the gathering rain clouds on our way to the elephant back safari but I figured it wouldn’t bother the elephants too much. There were 12 people in all, 2 for each elephant. When we met the elephants I was surprised by the range in sizes. There was a huge bull with massive tusk, there were medium sized elephants with little tusk, and even some babies tagging along with their mothers. (nobody rode those). I jumped up real fast when the leader asked who wanted to ride ‘Bop’ and pointed to the really massive one. Heidi glared at me a little.

There was a wooden ramp built that the elephants would shimmy up next to so their riders could easily get onto. But Bop was too big so we had to get on the old fashion style, by getting hoisted up, getting a foot in the stirrup and swinging ourselves across his back. Talk about a seat with a view. We must have been at least 20 feet up.

The elephants set off into the forest with us on their backs. The rain started coming down in earnest but we didn’t even slow down. Luckily they provided us with ponchos for protecting our camera gear. We walked by herds of impala, bushbuk, and a very surprised family of warthogs. The babies got spooked by the elephants and darted off in different directions. One was so shocked that he ran right into a log and flipped himself over.

The funnest part came when we crossed a deep section of the river. Bop’s head was completely under, tusk and all, with just his trunk out of the water like a snorkel. He hesitated and thought about sitting down in the water but we kept him moving. I had always wanted to see an elephant in deep water and now I have ridden on one!

After getting back our backsides were a bit sore but I thought not as bad as camel riding in India. The elephants had been ripping off branches the entire safari but never really stop eating so they greedily took food from our hands afterwards. It felt so wild standing right in front of such a massive animal, inches away from its tusk, feeling hot air blown on you from his trunk. We would put handfuls of food into Bop’s trunk and he would curl it up and deposit it back to his mouth. We would barely have time to reach in for more before his trunk was back in our face ready for the next handful.