Today is the day for an . . . .

. . . .  .     Elephant ride - we went to a very well run Elephant house today to take a short ride on a pachyderm through a spice farm....
The last time I went on an elephant ride we had a beautiful howdah; this time no such luck. We had to straddle the elephant. Elephants are wide.  My arthricticky hips struggled to allow legs to stretch over the back and before I was settled comfortably the elephant was off!    Well - you can imagine it was not the most uncomfortable ride to start with; however, the mahout stopped ellie to take photos and I was able to readjust my seating.....The mahout took this of Terrifo (another blipper) and self on the elephant in the cardamon fields.
We'd started the day with an early morning lake trip to see elephant and bison and numerous birds = magical. Especially when we saw wild otters playing near the shore.
We went on to another spice farm run by three lads who are obviously loving their life and are excellent at explaining recipes for using the various organic spices they grow. They also grow coffee and cacao and made delicious chocolate. It was a great visit, highly recommendable as the lads were exuberant and full of knowledge and enjoyed telling us all about it.