The Day Of The Elephants (an entry from Ben's journal for homeschool)

    We woke up at around quarter to seven and Pawan, our driver, was waiting for us. Then, we drove to a place called Elefantastic. There, we met an elephant named Shakku. Our elephant regime involved feeding her, painting her, washing her (plus the most unique shower in the world in my opinion), and finally, walking her. The one less obvious rule was that if she had food in her trunk, don’t take it back. Or to put it simply, don’t tease her with food. 

    First, we fed her these sugary lumps of some sort because then she would see us as friends. Then, we fed her sugar cane and we saw her sucking it and crunching it with her big teeth to get the sweet juice out. Then, we painted it which I guess is soothing for her. 

                                
 

    After that one of the elephant-people hosed her down and we brushed her. And just when Shakku was drinking innocently, she stopped, and started washing herself mercilessly without any sympathy for anyone in the way. Now, you shouldn't feel bad for us, we had expected this would happen because the elephant-people had asked us if we had a change of clothes. After that, all of us soaking, me and Clara got on Shakku’s back. And the merciless drenching continued. Then, it was my parents’ turn. After the third onslaught, we got changed, or they did, because clothes for me were forgotten. Although it was a hot day so my clothes dried quickly. 

    The walk was uneventful, other than Shakku pooing and the rainbow parasols. Then, we said our goodbyes to Shakku, and went to have lunch at the owner’s mom’s house, which was fun. We also went to the City Palace in Jaipur, but I know I’ve written like, a lot (because this was previously on paper, written by hand) and nothing really happened in the City Palace other than the 2km detour, the pooing cow, and the curious dog. That’s all we did on March 24th. Goodbye!