notes from a sun-scorched land: I think I'll call her "Freckles"

We think she is 35 years old.
But we were told that owners tend to lie about their elephant's age, because they get more money for their elephants if they are younger.

In Chitwan National Park (Nepal), you can ride an elephant. We went early in the morning. It was very quiet, and a bit foggy at first.

We failed to ask her name. Not sure if she actually had one. But for reasons you can see in this photo, I thought "Freckles" was appropriate.

(Apparently elephants can live to about 75 years old. That means they could outlive their owners.)

One of the surprising things was how quietly an elephant walks. All three of us (Tim, me, friend Hannah) remarked that we didn't expect such a large animal to tread so quietly.

When she stopped for a drink of water, she breathed in deeply in between each drink. The feeling of this enormous creature breathing in, as you feel her body expand with each breath, was amazing. I think I stopped breathing when she was taking these deep breaths, just to completely feel the movement.

It was all three of us on top of the elephant. A padded (for her and for us) square platform rests on her back, for riders.

Here is another elephant walking near us, so that you can see what this looks like. (They were only near us for a few minutes; the rest of the 1.5 hours was just us, out in the quiet.)

A view from our perch ...

While on these elephants, you can see some other animals. We saw some deer (the stag was too quick to snatch a photo) ...

And then we came upon a momma and baby rhinoceros. Oh, what a cool sight. And the way the baby trotted along was adorable. I just couldn't watch this through the view finder to give you a video -- I wanted to savor this special site with my eyes, but in this shot you can see his little legs lifting off the ground, to give you a hint of his cuteness.