Travels on My Elephant

There is no better way to see India than from the howdah of an Indian elephant. This is exactly what Mark Shand discovered as he set out on a thousand kilometer journey on Tara, a thirty-year-old female elephant. Their destination was the Sonepur Mela, the world's oldest elephant market. What began as an adventurous whim soon developed into an unlikely romance. Tara, the scrawny and ill-treated begging elephant which Shand had acquired, was transformed through tender loving care on the journey into a star attraction. Everywhere they went -- into communities that had not changed in millennia or along new arterial roads where trans-continental juggernauts thundered past -- the western mahout, trained by Tara's minder, and his five eccentric Indian companions drew inquisitive crowds to admire their elephant. This account of the trials and tribulations of the journey is told with charm and wit, and is illustrated with captivating photographs in colour. Yet, in the best tradition of all good travel writing, there was an inward as well as an outward journey. Merely arriving was not the end of the story, and finding a good home for Tara was to present the greatest challenge of all.