I Like Elephants

Hello,

This is Hailey who hates trains. If I were you I would take an elephant instead-they're much more comfortable! A little while ago (11 Dec) my family and I went to Amber Fort (in Jaipur) and rode elephants up to the fort. It was really fun.

In the car on the way to the fort we saw camels and elephants all dressed up in shiny things. The people that own the elephants wanted us to ride them to the fort. But our cab drove us to the bottom of the fort where other elephants were waiting for someone to get on their back and ride them up (you could only ride the elephants up to the fort, not into it or down to the bottom again).

All four of us got on one elephant. There was a seat on the elephant’s back so we could all fit.
I was sitting back to back with Daddy and next to Mommy. Sloan was back to back with Mommy. The seat was a square platform and there were bars going up from each corner, and bars connecting those-so we had something to hold onto.

When the elephant started walking we bumped into each other. Me and Mommy were both going to the left and right but at different times so when I went to the left and she went to the right we crashed into each other. Then when I went to the left I went back so I bumped into Daddy...Luckily I wasn’t anywhere near Sloan - That wouldn’t be good!

Our elephant's name was Malti just like our friend in Baroda. When we got off Malti we took a picture with her and petted her-her skin was really rough and her fur was just little bendy spikes coming out of her skin.

Then we got a guide to take us around the Amer Fort but a lot of people call it Amber Fort. First we went to a temple…No ‘dead’ cows allowed inside, as in no leather allowed inside but we brought in Sloan’s leather camera case in anyway. Inside the temple there were people sitting on the floor praying…well singing and praying. This woman was dancing and singing with all these bracelets on so she jingled when she danced. People were also making offerings to the god or something they gave flowers or shells or whatever and every time they made an offering they rang this huge bell so by the time I was out of the temple everything inside my head was going ding-dong and then there was this chubby looking man who kept ringing the bell for some reason. Everyone else rang it when they came in and when they left, I wasn’t watching him the whole time so he could have come in and out fifteen times.

Then we went to lunch and had the cheapest lunch yet. We had plain nan, garlic nan, dal, rice, potatoes and a bunch of other stuff for rs.324 which would be six dollars and forty eight cents in America. We even had leftovers to give our driver.

Also in Jaipur Daddy, Sloany and I went to a museum and the observatory to see the world’s largest sundial. See if you can figure out what time the shadow says it was. I think it was between 3 and 4:00. Mom was in the car sleeping.

That night we went to the train station to wait for our sleeper to Jaisalmer. We were an hour early, but the train was late, so we spent an hour and a half naming the rats. The announcer woman kept talking about a ‘superfast’ train to somewhere. Clearly it was not our train. Our train took over 14 hours to get to where it was going, about two hours longer than it was supposed to.

If you read this entry, please leave a comment.
Hailey
copyright 2008