Elephant collaring on safari
There are a few times a year where I get to stand somewhere and think: WTF is happening. Occasionally in a good way.
I used to be obsessed with going on every single game drive, convinced that the one I didn't go out on something so remarkable would happen that I'd be internet shamed for millennia for not having witnessed it.
But these days I read the additional activities list first. My kids have shadowed an anti-poaching unit, visited local schools, swum in rivers, learnt to fish, stargazed with people who (apparently) know what they're talking about, and hiked up hills to stare at bushman paintings. "Hiked" is doing a lot of work there. They were carried.
But, without a doubt, the coolest thing is when the conservation team come calling. There are times when they need to sedate an animal in order to tag it, as part of their efforts of trying to reduce human/animal conflict and know where the animals are. I've been lucky enough to do this twice with rhinos, once as part of a relocation project in Zimbabwe, where the area had simply ended up with too many of them. There are worse problems.
Last week, we were present for an elephant collaring. Essentially, the conservation teams need donations for these things, cos helicopters are as expensive as you may imagine helicopters are, so they rely on guests. I guess this counts as my good deed of the year and I'll take the other 5 months off. They dart it, it goes down, and you've got roughly thirty-sixty minutes to fit the collar and do whatever else they need to do, before it wakes up and reconsiders its relationship with everyone standing nearby. We were there for the whole thing.
Being next to the largest land animal in the world is quite something. I've included a video where you can hear it breathing.
Lions next, I guess...