Elephant Festival

Every March, just before Holi (a Hindu festival we'll talk more about tomorrow), our city holds an Elephant Festival. Presently there are over 100 elephants that live and work in our city and 95 of them were at the festival. It all started off with an elephant parade. The elephants were decorated from tusk to tail and some were very ornate. All 95 of them paraded around the arena...it was quite a sight! After the parade, around 20 humans played tug of war with one elephant - and lost very quickly! Next was the elephant polo match. There were 6 elephants with 2 riders each playing polo. It was a slow moving but very interesting game. We are so glad that we went and I think we'll try to attend every year. We took over 90 pictures, but unfortunately we can't fit them all on here.

Decorated elephant - we thought it was so cool that they even paint their toenails.

Camels with mounted guns - they were part of the parade.

Elephant polo - you can see that in this picture they're getting ready to hit the ball.

This is one of my favorite pictures. I can't imagine how much time it took to paint the elephant like this...and who knows how they get the mirrors to stick!

No, you're eyes are not deceiving you, there is an elephant in this picture!

If you're ever here in March, this festival is worth seeing!