The evening sun slid down in the horizon as we stood silently with the jeep’s engine off, watching a baby elephant stand right in the middle of our path in the jungle!
Within touching distance under the headlights of the jeep we were completely struck by the beauty of nature and how this baby looked so lost
Barely had few seconds elapsed, when the roar of a heard of elephants echoed all around us, dust was swirling with much snorting and stumping! The driver switched off the jeep lights afraid the elephants would attack us all; we were now surrounded by darkness, our eyes adjusting slowly to the natural night-light
The baby elephant was now surrounded by a giant heard of elephants who came threateningly close to our jeeps with their trunks up, making angry noises. The message was clear ‘it is our land”.
This heard stood in our path for an eternity I had forgotten my camera, and wondered in my head several times what if they attacked our open jeep? The driver had no weapon on him- we were unarmed and miraculously alive after such a thrilling episode of our lives! In the time the elephants glared and snorted at us angrily standing barely 6 feet away I felt afraid with this raw power of animals, felt meek in front of this giant sized animal, felt humbled by natures magic of such diversity and yet so similar to a mother protecting her child in my world,
The 20 odd herd of elephants decided to move onwards to their home in the night and the driver visibly shaken – he has been driving this jeep for the last 20years and had never felt so threatened he said to us later - we slowly brought the engine alive, put the headlights back on and made our way with stealth back to the jungle resort lights
2 comments:
I'd gone to Annamalai for a trek and visited an elephant camp, and while speaking to the guides, realised that they arent afraid of snakes and the big cats. But elephants terrify them.
Yea so said this guy too. Wonder what why?
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