Sultan’s Elephant

Sultan’s Elephant – 4th-7th May 2006, London

The Sultan’s Elephant came to London in May, and it was so amazing that I thought I’d dedicate a blog to it.

It lasted few days around central London, and told the story of a Sultan, his giant time travelling elephant, and a ‘little’ girl.

The people in red were controlling the elephant and girl – they did a pretty amazing job.

The mechanical elephant was 40ft high.

Just to demonstrate the scale of it..

These pictures were actually taken during rehearsals

It could squirt water, and even sit down

Overnight both the girl and elephant went to ‘sleep’ and woke up the next day. The girl even had a shower as the elephant squirts water from its trunk, but I didn’t get to see all that.

The next day I saw the girl having a nap in a giant deck chair in Hyde Park though

It was so realistically done – she could even be seen breathing :o She even ate at one point.

Sultan’s men arrived

I went to find the elephant though – no one knew where it would be, so people were literally running in the direction of the music.

I found it :D

I got pretty close to it

Honestly, these pictures don’t truly represent how magical this experience was. I’ve never seen so many Londoners so in awe at once.

A spectator described the experience on the official website as follows:

‘…the most enchanting, spectacular, beautiful piece of fairytale that I think I’ll ever see. I have the strangest feeling today, something in between grief and joy, sad that I will never see that beautiful Little Giant or that gargantuan Elephant and happy that I had the privilege to meet them. Thank you for reminding me how to be a child and for realising that cynicism is not a way of life!’

He/she can’t be more right. I really hope Royal de Luxe who organised the whole thing comes back to London – it was like a surreal fairytale had hit the city.

By the way all of these shots were taken with my now retired compact digi :P

For some wonderful shots, see this flickr pool