The African Savanna Elephant is the largest mammal on land (the blue whale is larger). A magnificent animal and here in Samburu they seemed quite friendly. They are a lot larger than their Asian cousins and much more difficult to tame. But in Zambia, I had ridden on one, so you can obviously train them. They live in the wild to an age of around 70 years. I love their enormous flapping ears. Especially in the babies they are very cute. But the ears have a practical purpose too: They are used to radiate excessive heat from their bodies.
We saw more elephants in Masai Mara (everything was “more” in Masai Mara) but we came closer to them in Samburu. Kenya has several sanctuaries for baby elephants, who have lost their mother and otherwise wouldn’t be able to survive. When they are a few years old these elephants are reintroduced into the areas they came from. We visited two such sanctuaries, one just outside Nairobi and one a couple of hours drive from our camp. This one here in Samburu was so nice. We were the only visitors apart from some young children from nearby.
At the elephant sanctuary, the baby elephants were like small children. Very joyful and obviously full of love for their carers. Every fourth hour, day and night, they came to get their milk at a special area and they slept there during the night, but at daytime they roamed freely around the area. But their milk bottles were of a slightly different size from the “mim-min” bottles that Eric drank 14 years ago.
