Save the Elephants

I have a particular fascination with elephants, perhaps because of their size. I love how graceful they seem, despite their size. We saw many herds of elephants at Samburu during our last safari in Kenya. (I've just found out that safari is Swahili meaning long journey, how appropriate! ). They seem to just glide across the vast African plane. I also find that it is one animal I have scrapped the most.

Imagine my delight to find this series on BBC last week, The Secret Life of Elephants. It was on BBC1, the final and third programme is on 28th January at 9pm. If you love elephants as much as me, you can find more details on http://www.savetheelephants.com/.

Now, let me tell you about a standoff we had with an elephant. This elephant above wasn't from Samburu but we spotted him in Masai Mara. He (we assumed it was a bull elephant as he was alone ) was on a path, walking towards us. Usually the animals would walk away but he continued walking towards us. He was less than 50 metres away.

He started looking aggressive and appeared intent on staying on the path. We stopped to see if he would walk off, he stopped to see what we were doing and decided to proceed on the same path. We were getting scared at this point and our driver decided to put the car in reverse, we reversed for a bit, bearing in mind that the path is small and windy, we couldn't go very fast in reverse. He kept coming so our driver drove off the path, into the bushes. Fortunately, the elephant continued on the path and walked off.

If you have experienced aggressive drivers coming the opposite way from you, down a narrow road, you would know the feeling. Except in this case, of course the elephant had the right of way! During the 2nd programme of The Secret Life of Elephants, Saba had to get into a car to frighten off a group of elephants from her own team who was putting on a tracking device onto an elephant. We could see immediately see how much courage it took to do such a thing and was grateful that during our own encounter, the elephant was just standing his ground.