Sorry for the Group Email

Donkeys are good at carrying people too. Even dogs have their uses, as long as you can get enough of them in the same place at the same time and tie them to a frictionless carriage, like a sled.

You know which animal should never be used to transport people (apart, possibly, from cadavers)? Elephants.

I liked our elephant from the moment I saw her (males, apparently, are too aggressive for nervous tourists). She was gigantic but disarmingly gentle, with an incredibly dextrous trunk. I also thought that elephants would be cool to the touch, a bit like a huge lizard. Instead, she felt a bit like a giant cow that had lots its fur in a bet.

You know what else? Elephants peel their food before they eat it. Not bananas (duh), but stalks and leaves. They’re clever things, evidently.

So clever, in fact, that the generations have apparently bred them to be the most uncomfortable rides imaginable. I don’t suppose our elephant was as uncomfortable as riding, I don’t know, a buzz saw over a rutted track while a hillbilly tries to garrotte you with a piece of wire with bits of broken glass stuck in it, but it certainly wasn’t pampered luxury.

We took the option of riding without a chair, congratulating ourselves on being un-touristy. Unfortunately elephants have spines. Whacking great things that jut out of their backs like mountain ranges. Anyone unfortunate enough (hi!) to have to sit on an elephant’s spine for more than a few minutes will have an injury to their rear end that will make them wince for days.

The neck looks promisingly fleshy but, promises Mendy, it isn’t.

We took the two hour (hah!) option, taking in a minor hill-walk, and then a spot of messing about in the river. The hill-walking was alternately excruciating and terrifying: when our elephant tilted downhill we felt like we were going to tip over the head and die an improbable and painful death under those huge feet. The river was better: apparently, elephants like nothing more than mucking around in the water, and we spent a cool half hour being thrown off her back.

So refreshing, in fact, that we forgot to wear sunscreen, and were rewarded the next day with painful sunburn. Ah, rookie tourists. You can tell who they are because they’re a different shade from the regular ones.

Dave has almost recovered. But I’m afraid my arse will never be quite the same again. More pictures, natch, in the Flickr set.