Elephants!

We woke early and the servants fixed us up with breakfast. Then ‘Boris Douchemacher’ picked us up again and drove us at a snails pace to the Dubare Forest Reserve for some interaction with retired forest elephants – yippee! First up was a quick boat ride across a fast-moving brown river, then we spotted the elephants plodding down to the waters edge. The plan was to wash the elephants, then see them being fed and finally take a quick ride on one.

We were raring to get stuck in, and luckily there were very few other tourists there, so it turned out to be a pretty fun experience! Our elephant, ‘Trevor’ (yup, we named him), was humongous and very muddy, so we had our work cut out for us. We waded in up to our knees (after seeing the elephants urinate and plop profusely in the water: lush!... all the other tourists decided to watch from the banks, funny that), and Trevor sploshed sideways into the brown water ready for his scrubbing. We started by splashing water all over the huge beast as he looked very content and made big sighs through his trunk. We were careful to avoid the floaters!!! Then we got the scrubbing brush and washed his head, body, and even behind his ears! Hilarious and quite captivating to be that close to such a massive beast! Next we watched as the elephants were fed football-sized ‘snacks’, two in at a time, of wheat, rice and sugar. Gaz’s head was hoovered by a cheeky elephant trunk at one point. The elephants then had their heads massaged with coconut oil… this is more like an elephant spa! We finished with an elephant ride – we’re not particularly fond of these as we feel sorry for the animals – but were pleased with how well looked after the elephants were, so it was ok.

For the remainder of the morning we were driven to a part of Coorg which has a Tibetan settlement to see a Tibetan monastery. The area was covered in prayer flags on all the trees and walls. A bit random seeing as we are in India, but it was an interesting stop nonetheless. We got chatting to some of the monks in the temple who seemed very friendly and eager to tell us about the place.

Back for lunch in our private dining room and a wonderfully relaxed afternoon as the heavy rain set in. We had tea and biscuits served, and played cards in the house. Rachel decided to set out for another walk in the plantation in the torrential rain armed with an umbrella, and returned after an hour a bit soaked through and spooked out at the thought of all the wild animals out there and having walked through a lot of big cobwebs!