Elephants play football - level 3
Elephants and their riders took to the football pitch during the Chitwan National Park Elephant Festival, hosted annually in Nepal. Bred in a local Elephant Breeding Centre, a gateway town to the renowned national park south of Katmandu, adult and baby elephants faced-off, kicking balls and scoring goals. The event, which used to be known as the International Elephant Race, has becomeincreasingly popular with locals and tourists.
“It was incredible. It was absolutely incredible. I mean, they were running around. They were pooping on the field. They scored goals. The small elephant was really cute.”
“Oh, it was really nice. I like the big elephant who scored the goal. Did you see it? It was really good. We don’t have that in Holland.”
Nepal has about 300 elephants, including more than 100 domesticated ones, which are used by hotels and national parks to take tourists on jungle rides to watch wild animals like one-horned Asian rhinos and Royal Bengal Tigers. Elephants are protected by law and anyone convicted of killing one faces up to 15 years in jail.
Difficult words: annual (happening once a year), breed (keep animals in order to produce babies), renowned (famous), face-off (fight of play), increasingly (more and more), convict (to prove or officially say that somebody is guilty of a crime).