Bali is beautiful. Although I don't think ill ever ride an elephant again. they should be in the wild not used to entertain us. lesson learned. 

 Went to India for an internship...

Got the chance here to sit on an elephant ! Was amazing!

 Done! 

 Surreal 

In 2010 me and my family visited South Africa. It was an experience I will never forget. There was the option to ride an elephant!! Cmon, who doesn't want to do that in your live ! So after a conversation with my parents (it was ofcourse expensive...) I got myself on top of the elephant! It was even higher than I thought it would be. Now I was as high as some of the trees! Despite it cost some money, I'm glad I did it and it was worth it!

 Thailand 2013

While traveling through Cambodia I had the opportunity to ride an elephant around the tombs surrounding Angkor Wat.  

Now I’ve never actually ridden a elephant before, and was not entirely sure whether I wanted to. There is always the worry that they may be ill treated.

However, our majestic beasts looked very well cared for and seemed quite content to plod along, with the occasional banana as motivation.

They really are enormous animals, even though I’ve seen them on TV, it still doesn’t prepare you for the reality of their scale! We had to climb up steps into a wooden hut on stilts and then onto our leviathan ride.

Now it wasn’t exactly a comfortable ride! Perched on our tiny little seats, with only a very low rail to stop us from dropping off the edge, we rolled from side to side with every ponderous step!

We had to cling on for dear life as our ponderous steads plodded onwards and if our ride had decided to make a break for it we would have been pretty much stuffed!

As it was we reached the end of our half hour ride relatively unscathed, although there was a unsettling moment when we had to go down a rather steep slope and we very nearly shot over the elephants head as we went down! Find out more about our experiences with the great grey wrinkly beasts here ://handluggageblog.com/?s=elephant 

 Thailand

At the Bristol Renaissance Faire.

Langkawi Malaysia

I rode an elephant in the jungles of Thailand. It was a great experience. There are places to do it at the zoo, but the elephants seem abused and you don't get to steer. We went into the jungle with locals and rode them by ourselves. It was a much better experience: Very "Temple of Doom".

 Amazing experience but it definitely hurt to see how the elephants were treated. 

Bali 2014 - Rode & swam an Asian Elephant.  Regretfully that his trainer carried a bull hook & the way they were kept made me sad, their website made the park seem a lot more humane. 

We had come returned to Natural Bridge since the bats were suppose to be back in the cave, which I wanted to see. Before getting to the caves we chose to stop by the zoo this time without Jacob who was with his mother so we could also get a baby tiger picture before he would be retired for photo lessons and added back into the zoo process.

 While we were coming around the back part of the zoo we saw they had their elephant (the living conditions for this elephant is particularly bad - she has one giant field, no friends (female elephants are social), one little shelter to protect from the sun and no water to play in thus leading people to try to save her) doing rides. There was no way we could afford the ride for two people as the tiger ticket had been expensive while we were saving up for the cave.

 Standing there watching and talking about the experience itself a man with his family turned around to us saying that we shouldn't miss the opportunity. The thing is I had been on an elephant ride a long time ago but I couldn't remember it so was happy to let it go but the man ended up paying so we both could go and then to get a picture of us riding the beautiful creature.

 And that was her name Beautiful - a 9-foot tall African female elephant, the 2nd biggest land animal (only the male is bigger than her). Climbing the stairs besides her just gave you a scope of how big the creature was and trying to stretch my small 5.2 self over her giant back (it hurt to get off since I was too stretched out while being a bit on the awkward side) would have been comical in many senses.

 Once seated her giant ears covered my legs like a blanket while I grabbed the bar before me to hold on. When she started off walking you could feel every indentation and hollow in the ground. Where the path dipped you dipped and where it climbed you also could feel her climbing while the feeling of her gait was like being on a ship since elephants move the same legs on both sides of their body before using the other legs.

 The view was glorious from such a high seat and there was a part where we had a bunch of guinea fowl in our path so that it was like almost re-living The Lion King at the beginning. Towards the end of the circle around the pen they stopped her for the given picture while making her stretch her ears and raise her trunk then had us smile. Looking at the picture I wonder what made me so confident and cool in this picture since my friend was so terrified (then again he didn't have anything to hold onto but me or the chains surrounding us) but then again it was just maybe the whole idea that here I was on top of the back of a creature who was so glorious.

 Loved the opportunity that it gave me but I wouldn't do it with this particular elephant again unless her living conditions were changed even though the proceeds are suppose to go to elephant enrichment.

Did it in Pai, Thailand. Incredbile experience, fell in the water, fantastic!

Somewhat uncomfortable.  I didn't know that my face would be hit with tree branches and I felt like I was going to slide off of my elephant seat.  All in all, amazing expierence though.

 When I was little and rode an elephant I didn't really understand that animals are not for this use. Now, looking back, I feel pretty bad that i did this.