An Elephant Ride

After Joe & Hannah left to go back to Bombay, I went to Jaipur, which is a city of about 2 million people in Rajasthan. Jaipur means 'City of Kings' and it was the place where the maharajas of Rajasthan lived in days of yore and still live to this day. One of the coolest sites to check out in Jaipur is the Amber Palace which is on a hilltop looking over the Rajasthani desert. The palace itself is beautiful and I'll do another post on that by itself. But the sweet section of this excursion is the ELEPHANT RIDE that you get to the top.

Now, riding an elephant is not like riding a bicycle...mostly because elephants are alive while bicycles are not. So you have to be prepared for the elephant to do things like shift randomly from side to side or blow a shower of watery snot all over you, etc. I don't really understand how the elephant driver maintained control over this incredible beast, but it involved a stick and some funny words that I didn't really understand...but it was kind of like eskimos saying 'mush!'

Anyway, the elephant ride is super fun and I highly recommend if you ever get to Jaipur you go to the Amber palace and pay your INR 500 to get to it on elephant-back. Awesome. And the elephants are treated very well...they only work till 10 AM and spend the rest of the day resting.

Here's an elephant's eye view of the road.

Stoked on the back of an elephant!Um yeah...this is what we call a snot shower. And that's an 'uncomfortable' smile. Good times!