Giving Baby Elephants a bath in the river!

Our last stop in India was Kochi--it was a lovely, quaint city with lots of beautiful heritage homes. The seaside was overflowing with gorgeous fish stalls (and hence, cats) and chinese fishing nets. We had an absolutely gorgeous fish curry with grated coconut and mango slices--a Keralan special!

At 6 am on our last day in India, we set off on a 2 hour drive to a beautiful hidden river. As the sun rose we approached the misty river and I was unbelievably excited to see 3 baby elephants! (Aged 3, 4 and 5). A female 40 year old elephant was also there. They are such adorable, elegant, intelligent, spirited animals but as I spent more time there and interacted with the elephants a feeling of guilt came over me.

The elephants were being trained for human entertainment--rides, the zoo etc. and it was obvious that the wild creatures spirits were breaking (especially the older elephant). They seemed to enjoy their bath-time and played in the water with their trunks but the fact that they were chained and the Indian trainers hit them with their poles made my heart break. I imagine it's just how a human feels in prison. I felt like I was contributing to their lifestyle, coming and supporting the tourism-serving life of these beautiful creatures--but I tried to take solace in the fact that we were playing with them and cleaning them--not using them for rides or viewing entertainment.

So, I picked up my half of the bristly coconut and scrubbed the baby elephants the best I could! We followed elephant playtime with a traditional Keralan breakfast at a home-stay where we dined in someones dining room having rice-milk pancakes with some sort of coconut curry and other tasty treats! Here are some photos of our beautiful morning.