Elephants!!!!!!!!!!(And the trip to Thailand)

Thai food, people and culture are some of my favorites. We make thai  foods frequently and could easily consume our weight in mangos any given week. The Thai people I've met here in the good ole USA are so nice, friendly and outgoing. I also love the tradition and architecture of Thailand (and Asia). I've heard wonderful things about the land of smiles and have always wanted to make the trek to Southeast Asia. While food, people and an amazing culture are all beyond good reasons to visit a place, what really drew me us (happy honeymoon, Papi!) to Thailand was the lure of elephants. ELEPHANTS, ELEPHANTS EVERYWHERE!

First Thai word I learned -ช้าง "Chaang" (elephant). 

Most delicious beer of Thailand- Chang.

                                                                                
Most revered, honored animal of Thailand- chaang.

Animal that one can visit, ride into the jungle, and ooh and ahh over for ridiculous amounts of time- chaang. 

Elephants are pretty much everything in Thailand. Love it!

One of the highlights of our trip was visiting an elephant camp where were got to visit with, ride, and bathe elephants. From India, we headed to Chiang Mai, Thailand to start the adventure in South East Asia. We arrived in Chiang Mai and took a sweet tuk tuk to a ridiculously clean, nice and cheap hotel.


 A note, off topic, about Tuk Tuks. I love them. Love, love, love them.They are so popular all over the word. America, why can you not welcome them with open arms? Who doesn't love riding in the back of a sweet motorcycle-mobile? They are infinitely better than taxi hands down. And so much more fun. More on Tuk Tuks later.

Here's Doug keeping things classy in the back seat of the Tuk Tuk

Anywho, back on topic. From Chiang Mai (more on this jem of a town later) we got up super early, ate some mangos and packed into a bus to head about an hour and a half deeper into Northern Thailand to Baan Chang  Elephant park. On our bus were folks from the US, Canada, England and parts of Asia. It was nice to chat with some new faces and hear about their travel adventures (and misadventures). We got some excellent tips (most notably that Thai massage is quite rough. We did not head this warning and I was sore for a few days after my first foray into Thai massage.)

After a drive into the countryside, we arrived at the camp where 15 elephants were waiting for us. There were even two baby elephants too! Before we could visit the elephants, we had to change into fabulous denim on denim outfits. Then, we made friends with the elephants by feeding them bananas and sugar cane.
It's was a little scary at first because they are massive animals (and these were Asian elephants. Apparently African elephants are even bigger), but we quickly got the hang of it.

After the first feeding we learned how to mount up and ride these babies.

 We got to ride the elephants around the camp and then got to ride them into a pond. We learned that elephants have very dry skin and have a hard time cooling off. To combat these two problems, elephants need to get wet a few times a day. The water moisturizes their skin, cools them down, and gives them something to drink. Riding them into the pond and bathing them was super fun. The elephants loved the water and I loved playing in the water with them.

View from the top of an elephant!

They had very thick, coarse hair all over

Ridin dirttyy (actually. Doug was right on the butt)

When they got an itch, they scratched on the trees.

Baby elephant!!

Tom Cruise, our guide for our few days at the camp. Super fun, super fabulous.

First attempt at the dismount.. Not as easy as it looks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jodhpur & the best fort ever

After our visit to the Taj, we made it back to Delhi for another night before heading west into Rajasthan to the town of Jodhpur. Jodhpur's claim to fame is that it's a blue city and that it was. So lovely!

We stayed in a haveli, which in the past was someone's mansion, but was now converted into a hotel. It was really neat with tiny little stairways heading in all directions, cool architectural details, and an awesome rooftop patio/bar/restaurant that overlooked the city. We took every opportunity to tell hotels we were honeymooners in the hopes of upgrades/goodies and this place came through! We got a cool room with a nice nook for reading/people watching and some colorful murals. They also gave us some nice flower necklaces (for lack of a better word..). Here we are happy to have arrived to our room and be in AC.. Johdpur was also quite hot (shocking, I know!).

Partaking in the best sport of them all- People Watching

 In Jodhpur, we spent a few days wandering the winding little streets of this cool city and checking out the markets. Rajasthan is famous for it's colorful fabrics, so we did some shopping which included hardcore haggling (I mean HARDCORE- back and forth, back and forth, throw some hands in the air, then go back and forth some more). Eventually they wore us down and we could haggle no more (and that's saying something- I love a good deal!) and we walked away with some colorful tablecloths, wall hangings and bedspreads at an only slightly inflated tourist price as opposed to the ridiculously inflated tourist price they began with.

Fabric/Rug/Bedding/Everything Store..

Market in the middle of the town

Aside from the blueness of the city, the main draw of Jodhpur was it's fort. The visit to the Mehrangarh fort was a highlight of the trip for sure and sent my imagination into a whirlwind. I can only imagine what it must have been like to live in the fort during it's heyday. We got to tour nearly all of the fort unattended and see elaborate room after elaborate room, along with other pieces of it's history (gilded cribs, ridiculously curved swords and some crazy palanquins). Oh how wonderful it must have been to be a Maharaja back then.. On your next trip to India, I would  recommend making a stop at Mehrangarh Fort. Heat and all, I'd go back.

Here are some pictures from the fort. They don't do it justice, but still they're pretty cool.

Entering the gates- this was the view up.

Hand prints of women who killed themselves when their spouses died in war. Sorry Dougie, I won't be doing that..

We were kind of hoping we'd get a ride in one of these

Acting the part..

Super cool honeycomb everywhere

Reception room- theme for our next home

Past Maharajas of the fort

Crib fit for a king. Complete with plenty of metal pointy things.

Smaller fort/monument outside the big fort. Amazing!

Then we went to a palace.. This city was loaded!

So this is some of India. I've really fallen behind in the world of blogging, so readers everywhere will have to settle for two weeks in sweltering heat squeezed into a few posts. India was hot, smelly and so different. But man, we ate some delicious street food and saw crazy things (example: elephant walking on main highway on the way to the airport). It was a bit of a challenge for even the seasoned traveler, but I'm so glad we went!