42 elephants on parade

“50 Elephants at a Temple Festival” said the sign. Aunt Jane said this was a great chance to see so many elephants in one place. The next day we went an hour and a half in a taxi to see the Annual Full-Moon celebration at a temple near Kollam. We followed 2 elephants to the temple grounds to see 26 more elephants standing in a crescent moon shape waiting for on other 14 elephants to come. I could see that elephants are huge because we were standing right beside them in the field. We were so close my sister and I could almost touch the elephants, but their keepers didn’t let us. Daddy was taking pictures like a photographer from National Geographic.
The elephants were wearing colourful masks decorated with colours of gold, green, white, red and yellow. Young Brahmin priests carried parasols and held the elephant’s crowns while riding on top of their elephants. One elephant pooped on its way in. The poops were the size of soccer balls!
After the elephants were in their places the fun began. Dancers wearing costumes played Shiva and other Gods from Indian stories. They danced to the sound of loud drums. After the dancers finished, there were other drummers, flutists and cymbal players that led the whole troupe of elephants through the temple doors and out onto the street to start the parade. Near the end, the priests opened the doors that showed the god Shiva, the elephants that went through afterwards turned their heads to make a trumpeting noise to greet the god. The noise was so loud that the people in the temple jumped 4 feet in the air.
After the elephants were gone, we went to the train station to drop off Great Aunt Jane and say good-bye. Then we went shopping. We had to cross a busy highway on foot. Mom almost had a heart attack! On the way home it was dark and countless little flickering candles lit up the front of shops and houses to celebrate the day. We got home late but I was so excited I never fell asleep in the taxi. It was a great day!

by Robert

More photos of this event have been put on our Flickr site as a set named "42 elephants". It can be viewed as a slideshow.