On the first day of our trip to the Kruger National Park, we saw an elephant taking a mud bath. Now, on the second day in the Kruger we saw another elephant but this time taking a normal bath, probably washing off the mud.
Lucky for me, my zoom lens helped a bit to get kind of close to the elephant. We sat in the car, looking at this herd of elephants taking a bath. It was such a peaceful moment (at the end of the post, I will share a kind of ASMR of the Kruger bushveld).
So, please join me on this photographic adventure as I show you how these magical animals take a bath.
We stopped at the side of the road where we saw a big herd of elephants. There were various small babies between the herd, but then we saw one lone bull walking to the edge of the river. We waited for a moment, and this was good instinct, because this big bull then decided to take a bath! Have you ever seen an elephant take a bath? This was something special to witness.
These animals can take up to 25-30 liters in their trunks, blasting the water all over their bodies. In the previous post, the elephant was taking a mud bath, but here, I guess, he was washing the mud from his body. And obviously cooling himself down in the summer heat.
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If we could stay longer we would have. But the moment was special. The elephant took its time, enjoying the cool water on its skin. It made the most of the moment.
In the mud bat post, I tried to make a philosophical or metaphorical moment of it. Here, we can say that even though we can take a bath in that which is dirty, we can also cleanse ourselves from the dirt, cooling our minds with the water that both cleanses but also nourishes.
But in the end, the bath was just a regular bath for this beautiful elephant.
In the end, like all of the other adventures, we could not stay that long. We watched this majestic beast cleaning itself for a while, then we decided again to leave it in peace.
But this made me wonder. How many of these mundane but beautiful moments pass without anyone seeing it? There is a philosophical thought experiment where you think about a tree that fell in the middle of the forest without anyone hearing it: did it make a sound? Today, we rewrite this, wondering if people will think we took a vacation or holiday if we did not post about it on social media. Here, we can think the same, did this elephant take a bath if I did not take these photographs?
Mundane moments in life are easily forgotten. We live through them, and we will never relive them. But we will also forget about them as soon as they are done. We take a bath or shower, much like this elephant, and forget about it as soon as we walk out of the shower (climb out of the bath). The mundane is just, forgetful. But we can think about it more consciously.
For now, happy photographing, and keep well.
All of the musings are my own, albeit inspired by this beautiful elephant. The photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and 300mm Tamron zoom lens.
