Life Should Consist of Journeys In Every Form!

Take a look at this picture:I'm sure you're thinking: "looks like lots of other pictures you take, in fact, you could be anywhere."

But you would be wrong. This picture was taken atop a beast named Shocka (as in Shocka Khan).

Dereje and I decided to celebrate getting his visa in style…Botswana style (that translates to going on a game drive on the back of an elephant). The ride was just amazing! Dereje and I got to ride together which was a lot of fun...and made us feel better about being up on the biggest elephant we had ever seen because we got to do it together!

A little bit into the ride we started to get a little bit comfortable.We got to feed our guy halfway through the trip…just to remind him that we were friend, not foe!

Dereje even gave our guy some pellets of food (Even though anyone who knows him knows that he hates having animals breath on him…which is a necessity upon feeding an elephant).

We made this adventure with our very good fiends Timmy and Nebu…who are often with us on any of our crazy adventures (basically, Timmy and I drag our men to anything we find remotely amusing). The trip ended on a wonderfully high note with a little bit of champagne and a great breakfast.
At the end, we got to say good bye to our faithful elephant! I think that Dereje's expression says it all…he liked the elephant ride, but wasn't yet ready to adopt our elephant and bring him home to the States…as for me…it was really tough to leave my new "little" Shocka!
p.s. Just for your information…climbing up on the back of an elephant is far from easy…it might have made sense to have a ladder or some kind of stirrup…but I need to remind you that this is Botswana where, instead of a ladder, some guy offers his hand and tries to hoist you up the side of these huge elephants…I'm sure you can imagine how graceful that whole scenario was!