Jumbo Load

Pick-up trucks crammed with a couple of dozen workers, scooters with four or five passengers, dangerously overloaded trucks, bikers with a pooch riding pillion ... in the end we become so blasé about it, we barely even notice any more. All the same now and again we spot something on the road to remind us that we haven't seen everything yet!

Driving home from Bangkok a few days ago, I pulled off for a break. I reckon the kidnappers had done a pretty poor job in disguising this buddha. Still, he seemed pretty composed about the whole thing...

A little further north, cruising along a downhill section of the Super Highway from Lampang to Chiang Mai, I caught sight of an elephant in the rear view mirror, closing fast. It was really motoring. Strictly speaking, I suppose it was the driver that was doing the motoring, but because of the angles, plus the rather high load on the back of my pick-up, the first thing I saw was the elephant's head bearing down on me. I accelerated a little to snap the above shot. I'm not quite clear why the two keepers in red trousers were holding hands - I think they would have had a little trouble restraining the beast, had it decided to go into reverse. Perhaps they were just good friends...

Plus I can think of better places to stand, other than behind an elephant's posterior on a long journey...

I followed it off the motorway, to get a better photo - it was heading for the Lampang Elephant Conservation Camp and elephant hospital (note the helpers keeping their feet well out of the way... otherwise it would have given a whole new meaning to the term 'traffic jam', had the elephant taken a step backwards!)

Home to Chiang Mai, and back to the everyday sights to which one grows rapidly accustomed. Needs must, I suppose, but transporting my family around like this would terrify me...