TomKal foto

There weren’t any problems with finding elephants in parks in Tanzania, with the availability of information about animals which could be observed there. The word “park” doesn’t have much in common with our European image of the space you have to face. A national park often means a space as vast as thousands of square kilometers. In RSA there were no encounters with elephants. In Tanzania I could observe whole herds of them, smaller or larger ones. I even made an attempt to count them once, on a difficult, slightly wooded and curvy terrain, I counted 47 specimen! Africa! Although photographing elephants was not on my dream list, with such an ease of photographing elephants, I couldn’t resist taking photos of this largest land mammal in the world.  Despite many observations of elephants I didn’t manage to encounter those biggest elephant loners – males whose weight can exceed 7 tons!
Last minute news -11/12-2022-Botswana
Botswana is home to the largest population of elephants. There are about 150,000 of them living there. We saw them often and a lot of photos were taken introducing variety in the gallery of this species. I will remember one encounter with them for the rest of my life. We finished photographing the owls around 9 p.m. We went to bed as usual, since we usually got up at 5 a.m., sometimes at 4 - such a vacation. At sunrise we were ready to photograph and so on until sunset. Around 10 pm a herd of elephants came by. Apparently, there were about 20 of them. 20-30 meters from our tents there was a pond, such a small pond to which the elephants came, and I guess further in their path stood our camp. Around the tents it was impossible not to notice elephant droppings, yes, so that's probably what it was. In the utter silence of the African night, suddenly the splash of water caused by the passage of these colossi through the water is impressive. Splash is a poor term, the noise they made. At one point I had the impression that they were all around us. To the right, the sound of hippos could be heard. Although no one spoke in the other tents, I had the irresistible impression that no one was sleeping after all. Brayan came out of his tent with a small flashlight, but I guess that was so that the elephants would know for sure that there were people here and avoid our encampment, and not accidentally walk through it. There were baby elephants in the elephant group, this also complicated things considerably. Observing a group of elephants, baby elephants are always in the middle surrounded by adults. The herd will do anything to defend their offspring. We all lay in our tents and wondered how the visit would end. Our small two-person tents are no protection against elephants. Fortunately, I recorded the sounds of this encounter as a souvenir which I added to the elephant gallery. Unfortunately, recording from inside the tent significantly degraded the quality of the footage, and so the march of the elephants through the water doesn't do it justice. This upcoming encounter, however, I did not record. At one point, I heard loud and clear behind my head the murmur of an elephant, or whatever the sound would be called, followed by a typical elephant sound. I don't know how to describe it, when in the complete darkness of the African night, a few meters behind my head, an elephant makes a sound, shrill, to me at the time. This time I thought we were too close to nature. Fortunately, after an hour of confusion, everything quieted down, and the rather faint roaring of lions (a considerable distance) no longer impressed anyone, and we fell asleep. Only in the morning did we start talking because no one dared to speak up during the night. That sunrise was probably the most beautiful sunrise we experienced in Africa, we all unanimously said in the morning.

              All other encounters with elephants were exciting, but we did not feel any threat from them. Quite disturbing were the encounters on the paved road leading to the border on the day we returned. Disturbing not to us, but to the elephants. Botswana is developing very rapidly. This is as a result of diamond production and tourism. Not insignificant is also cattle breeding and increasing agricultural production. Botswana is twice the size of Poland, and there are 2.2 million people living there, 38 in Poland. Such a small population ratio is the answer to why there is such a large population of elephants. There will be less and less of it in a developing Botswana. Space cannot be used in many ways. It is either for people or for animals. Growing human population, means more and more need for space management. For these reasons, bustards have become extinct in Poland, and in small Iceland, tourist traffic exceeding 2 million a year (Iceland's population less-than 100,000) is already giving rise to environmental nuisances. And I guess this will also be the case in developing Botswana. We drove on a paved road called a highway in Botswana. This notion is greatly exaggerated, because it is an ordinary road with one lane for each direction side by side, with no separation, only that there you are allowed to travel at 120 km/h. On top of this, on both sides of the road, almost all the trees and bushes have been cut down in a strip about 20-30 meters wide, so that suddenly from behind a tree, for example, an elephant does not appear on the road. Driving at night on such a road is a misunderstanding and probably a lack of imagination on the part of the driver. A collision with an elephant is a big problem even for a truck and most likely means death for the elephant as well. In Europe, we build fences and thus protect the possibility of animals invading the road. How can this be done over a distance of hundreds of kilometers in relation to elephants? It is impossible, and certainly very expensive. We have seen dozens of elephants along such a road. Brian is a responsible driver with respect for nature. He always slowed down to avoid disturbing the elephants and to keep a safe distance. However, not everyone does this. We witnessed where a speeding truck at the sight of an elephant, instead of slowing down, the driver just used the horn to scare the elephant away. The animal can be seen irritated, a few meters from the road, shaking its head nervously as the truck passed. I took the time to photograph it and posted it in the Botswana - Others gallery (link).  This intensity of encounters will increase as Botswana progresses. We drove more than 1,000 kilometers in the wilderness, but we did not manage to observe a rhino. They are already rare throughout Africa. I guess you have to hurry as long as there are still such enclaves of wild Africa to see with your own eyes these natural wonders and all the African beauty of this diverse continent. Development, demographic growth is inevitable, so it is also inevitable that we will displace more animal species, or significantly reduce their existing populations. Meeting elephants has always been like a first, unique to the size, beauty of these animals and the emotions involved. The gallery has grown to elephant proportions.