Elephants!!

Hikkaduwa Emergency Elephant Service. Some times in the jungle ambulances don't work so well, thats when we use one of our small fleet of rescue elephants. We also have one that specializes in extrication for those really tough jobs! Just kiddding of course.... Here's how you get up on an elephant..... first you must take off your shoes or sandals , (I don't know why), then the "mahout" or handler has the elephant raise his left leg a little off the ground, then you put your LEFT leg on the elephants leg (kinda of like stepping on a ladder), then you jump up grab the highest up part of the elephants ear, and simultaneously, when the elephant feels the added weight on his fore leg he quickly lifts it up as high as he can and then up you go, a little like an elevator.....timing is everything, it took me 3 trys and an extra person helping to get up there! Elephants love bannanas, palm fronds and coconuts. They put the coconut under their foot with their trunk and squish it, but it's slippery so it usually takes them a couple of tries. They mahoot tells me that they sleep standing up because the don't like bugs getting in their ears. The elephants are usually owned by temples, privately if you are really really rich, or they are wild in parks. In some parks in Sri Lanka you can easily see several hundred in a day. The other pictures you see are from the Hikkaduwa Perahera. This is a 4-5 day Buddhist party. Usually consists of a large parade lasting about 5 hours once a day starting either at noon or midnight. Specialized dance troops came from all over Sri Lanka. Each troop has a unique costume and elaborate dance they do.

There are usually about 10 t0 30 dancers in each troop, along with a usually large complement of drummers and horn players. The Kandy Perahera is the biggest in Si Lanka, when Sean and I were there we counted over 60 elephants and about 30 dance troops. This year the Hikkaduwa one was much much bigger. There were only 10 elephants but there were 97 dance troops. On the last day there was an all night ceremony of dancers and singing culminating with fire walkers at 0500 in the morning. We stayed up all night and it was well worth it. No I didn't fire walk but probably over 100 people did. The head priest was first to go then villagers, grand mothers, and even some kids did it.