Eye to Eye with a Sri Lankan Elephant

Sri Lanka is a beautiful island off the coast of India, exactly halfway around the world from where I live. Sri Lankan Elephants migrate among about five national parks, and I had the opportunity to visit Kaudulla National Park in 2018.

These are wild elephants, not confined in any way. Asian elephants are much less defensive than African elephants, and are quite tolerant of humans touring the park in trucks. But it's still necessary to keep a safe distance from them, and we had to carefully back away when a big bull let us know by throwing dirt in the air that he thought we were a little too close to his family.

Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants, and have much smaller ears. In the Sri Lankan subspecies, only males have tusks, and only about 10% of them.

We spent an hour or so in the presence of these magnificent animals, learning about how they eat, and watching the families interact. At one point a few of them decided to bathe in the lake, splashing and spraying. Most of the elephants were in the open, but a few sometimes wandered off into the jungle.

It was fascinating just to be among them, listening to their snorts and snuffles and trumpeting and splashes. There were quite a few youngsters, and I noticed that they nearly always kept in contact with their mothers.

The photo below shows the typical view of them zoomed in with my telephoto lens from a safe distance - nice, but not spectacular images. I took over 100 shots, plus some 3D pictures on my iPhone, plus a few minutes of video. 

Too soon, it was time to leave, and we made our way back along the muddy track on the edge of the lake. The road made kind of a U around the patch of forest, so were were still kind of near the herd but could not see or hear them. Then it happened! The driver stopped the truck for a moment to navigate a puddle, and this elephant came out of the forest right behind our truck, no more than 15 feet away. There's no way we would have approached one that closely, but this was its choice to walk right behind us. It looked at us for a moment with its big red eyes, then lumbered across the trail and disappeared into the jungle again. I only had time for a couple of shots. The one at the top was the one I had been hoping for all day. Sometimes we get lucky!

I think images like this remind us that big, wild things are still out there living their lives. Adventures can bring us closer to nature, but we need to experience it on their terms. I picture this image printed large, and mounted in a meeting room or lobby where we can gaze into the elephant's eye. Or... imagine it mounted in a hallway, waiting to surprise people as they come around a corner. Let me know what you think.

The close-up shot is available from our Pixels gallery by clicking here.