Feeding Elephants

After we rode on elephants at Amber, we went to a different place in Jaipur where you feed elephants (you could also ride them, but we skipped that because we already had at Amber). The elephants were all very friendly, except for a male the Indians told us to stay away from. The caretakers for the elephants gave us sorghum stalks to feed the elephants. Some of the thicker stalks I could barely break over my knee, however the elephants could crush a stack of twenty of them using only their jaws. We never really think of elephants as having potentially dangerous jaws, but believe me, the way they crushed those sorghum stalks, they could break bones with their mouths. Elephants have really tough, leathery hides, that have to be at least a centimeter thick. No wonder Indian civilizations in the past used them as steads of war. A common siege tactic in past Indian warfare was to strap metal plates on the elephants wide heads and have them try to batter down the gates of the fortress being attacked. As a result, at least on of the archaic strongholds we visited had long, dagger-like blades fastened to its gate to keep charging elephants at bay. After the elephants had finished the stalks of sorghum we gave them, they would wave their trunks around us in a comical way, looking for more food we might possibly be hiding from them. Feeding and observing these Indian elephants  was a very unique experience I'll never forget.

Me next to an Indian elephant.