Travels on my Elephant

by Mark Shand

  ‘Wait! wait!’ Bhim shouted suddenly to the mahouts. ‘If Mummy see, not go. Maybe go backwards.’

  With strong feet movements against her neck Bhim urged her backwards into the truck. Cautiously Tara planted one back leg inside, then the other. She was now half in and half out.

  ‘Now,’ Bhim shouted, ‘come with spears.’

  A solid wall of sharp points rushed towards her. Squealing in terror she reversed hurriedly into the truck and the big steel-lined doors were slammed behind her.

  Encased in this foreign wooden prison, Tara went berserk stamping her feet, swaying from side to side. Her trunk curled around the top edges of the open box, as if trying to pull herself up. The truck lurched alarmingly and, in her fear, a continuous gush of urine and runny excrement poured through the floor-boards. The mahouts clambered up the sides of the truck. Using their ropes like lassoes they trussed her tightly. Bhim and I climbed up and peered inside. Tara’s eyes rolled in terror and she squealed, reaching out desperately to us with her trunk.

  There was one last rope to tie, the most dangerous, the one that would secure her back legs. From the top of the truck Bhim shouted down to Gokul who was standing on the ground looking miserable.

  ‘You go my son. Mummy not hurt you. Then you proper mahout.’ It was his final test for the young man – Bhim’s last lesson. Gokul lithely clambered up the side of the truck and dropped in beside her. Rubbing her ears to soothe her, he moved quickly underneath her legs. Tara became still, obediently lifting one leg and then the other, to step into the open nooses. Bhim bent forward and kissed her once on her forehead. As he climbed down, tears were streaming down his face.

  The taxi arrived to take Bhim and Gokul to the station. I embraced them both tightly and thanked them. I couldn’t face a prolonged farewell. I had become so close to them. Now they would disappear from my life for ever. Bhim saluted smartly. As he got into the car, he wound down the window.

  ‘Bhim happy now. Mummy go good place. But remember Raja-sahib, Mummy miss you. Haathi do forget. See her by six months. Not forget,’ he called as the car drove away.

  When the truck moved slowly through the Haathi Bazaar, all the mahouts scrambled to their feet, clasping their hands together and shouting – ‘Go safely, little one. Our blessings are with you.’

  As we reached the road leading to the bridge, a police escort was waiting – a last kind gesture from the Superintendent. The truck joined the queue of vehicles inching down the road. Tara lifted her trunk and let out one last shrill trumpet, but the sound was drowned by the roar of the traffic.

  Epilogue

  ADITYA AND I flew to Delhi. Three days later we left for Kipling Camp. I tried to dissuade Aditya from coming. His burn was giving him great pain, his usually sun-blackened face had turned pale and was covered in a permanent sheen of sweat. But he insisted on accompanying me, to see that Tara was happy.

  Kipling Camp nestled in a grove of trees, rows of little white-washed bungalows, surrounded by luxuriant forest, where Tara could gather her fodder. Near by, a clean river flowed, spilling into deep rock pools. Tara could not have found a better home. It was wonderfully peaceful. Bob was there to greet us, a kind man, his gentleness camouflaged by a brusque manner. He was enthralled by Tara, and had already made plans to build her a proper stone stable, and quarters for Mujeem.

  Indrajit and Aditya left the next day. I would see Aditya again in Delhi, but Indrajit was going back to Bhubaneshwar. We shook hands formally. Indrajit’s fierce eyes softened for a moment and I realised how fond I had become of this loyal man, as he told me of how the journey had changed his life: of how much he had learned and benefited. I would never forget him.

  I spent two idyllic days with Tara. Everybody left us alone, respectful of my feelings. She was still a little shaky, not quite her old self, affected by the long truck ride. Her neck was a mass of sores and abrasions where the ropes had cut into her. We explored her new territory together – going for long rides in the quiet forest – wallowing and playing in the rock pools. In the afternoons, she would stretch out in the lengthening shadows and I would lie on top of her and write my diary. In the evenings I would watch her feeding on a new delicacy prepared by Mujeem – large doughy chapatees, as big as serving dishes, which she would chew slowly, her eyes squeezed tight, in total bliss.

  On the evening of my last night, my stomach started to churn with the dread of having to say goodbye. I needed something to numb my feelings. I needed to get drunk and leave with a hangover. Bob kindly gave me a bottle of whisky and after dinner I joined her.

  Tara was already lying down. I settled comfortably between her legs, my head propped up on her stomach. However, she wasn’t going to let me drink alone. As we shared the whisky, I told her of my home, the land that I lived in and why she would not be happy there. In reply, she occasionally rumbled. Before I passed out I vaguely remembered feeling something long and warm encircle my neck and draw me closer.

  I awoke with a start in the early hours. The mist was heavy on the ground. Something was poking me urgently on my backside. I rolled over, my head throbbing. She was standing over me, looking disapproving, signalling towards a pile of sugar cane. I fed her for the last time.

  As the car was taking me out of the camp later that morning, I asked the driver to stop. I walked slowly towards Tara, my mind detached, floating. Holding her tail, I clipped off three long springy hairs, the only memento I would take with me. It was then that Tara gave me my last lesson: elephants do weep. When I kissed her on her eye, one hot salty tear fell, staining my cheek. I walked quickly back to the car. We moved slowly away. I forced myself to look stonily ahead. But, as we rounded the corner, I turned and caught one last glimpse of her standing quietly, looking at me. Then she was gone, swallowed up in India’s dust.

  Afterword

  ‘WITH ONE HIND leg crossed over the other she was leaning nonchalantly against a tree, the charms of her perfectly rounded posterior in full view, like a prostitute on a street corner. I knew then that I had to have her. Suddenly, nothing else mattered and I realised with some surprise that I had fallen in love with a female Asian elephant.’

  Twenty-five years have passed since this meeting with an elephant whom I called Tara. It was a meeting that was to change my life – a life which, although filled with adventure and fun, had been going nowhere. Through Tara, I found a real purpose, more than that – a passion. For the last 10 years I’ve been heading up one of the most successful elephant conservation charities in the world, and if it hadn’t been for my love affair with Tara, God knows where I’d be.

  * * *

  But how did it happen? How did a posh, privileged, fat, little boy with a fiendish temper end up one steamy, Indian monsoon night, deep in the jungles of Orissa, buying an elephant? It was a circuitous 35-year route, detouring through the respectable and the disreputable, the fast, the furious and the far reaches of adventurousness.

  A love of animals developed early on. Spending my childhood holidays in the English countryside, often with an old gamekeeper, I developed my natural affinity with, and love of, nature and the indigenous wildlife. And at the same time, during lengthy shopping trips to Harrods, I would give my mother the slip and escape into the pet department, a deafening and exotic emporium that smelled of hay, birdseed and fur. I spent some of my happiest times there, wandering through the bewildering and magical labyrinth of cages that squawked, squealed, chirped, grunted, roared, growled and dazzled with myriad exotic species that conjured up for me the mysteries of far-flung lands. It was here that I bought ‘Charlie’, much to my mother’s horror – a glossy mynah bird that woke me up every morning saying ‘I love you’ in a broad Irish accent. It was here, to my mother’s even greater horror, that I took possession of ‘Tiki’, my cunning and swift Indian mongoose which nearly gave an elderly lady a heart attack in an Italian restaurant by climbing up her stockinged leg, on to her lap and on to the table, to help her open the clams of her spaghetti alla vongo
le. And it was here, perhaps, that a passion to discover the mysteries of those distant places was awakened in my child’s mind.

  Expelled from public school at the height of the swinging sixties for smoking dope, and excelling only in History of Art, I was sent by my father, who thought it ‘might put some spine in the little bugger’, to Australia. I spent a year down under, working on sheep and cattle stations, and as a guard on an Opal mine in Cooper Pedy, bang in the desolate and blistering heat of central Australia. I travelled round the country with two friends in an old car and even made some money by investing in the booming mining market. But, I could have made more. I still kick myself at the wasted opportunities, but considering my character, I can well understand my father’s hesitation in sending more money. In those days, I was offered beach-front property, for a dollar a mile, in Northern Queensland. It is now the Gold Coast.

  But it was India, where I stopped on the way to Australia, that awoke a passion and love that has and will remain with me for the rest of my life. I was supposed to stay a few days. I stayed a month. I don’t know what it was, but I believe you can fall in love with a country with the same passion that you can fall in love with a person or, in my case, an elephant. I felt immediately at home. I had lived there in another life, at another time. It was that smell – the smell of incense, cow-dung, smoke, shit, sweat, burning fires, Chamoli and Champa blossoms, sandalwood, disinfectant, frying curry leaves, chilli, chai and moth balls. It is a fragrance so heady that I’ve always thought if a great parfumier could bottle it, the scent would be the most intoxicating in the world.

  Returning to the West, after a number of false starts in business I founded Obsidian in New York with a friend, Harry Fane, selling objets d’art and jewellery by the great jewellers of the Art Deco period, such as Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels and Boucheron. It was perfect for me, combining travel and art. We were both good salesmen, and Harry took care of the finances, which were not my strong suit. Like posh swagmen in linen suits, with sacks of beautiful booty over our shoulders, we hit the rich and famous, the old and new wealth in the money-drenched capitals of the Americas: Caracas, New York, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Palm Beach and Miami. In the mid ’70s, New York became the party capital of the world with the advent of the infamous nightclub, Studio 54. It was hedonistic, decadent, glamorous and fuelled by the drug of the moment – cocaine. Although this period remains a complete haze I made many good friends.

  Every year, to escape the partying, socialising and selling, Harry and I set off for the magical island of Bali for two months. There, a friend designed and built us a beautiful Robinson Crusoe house on a surfer’s beach. We lived a bohemian life, chilled-out and very anti-social. We had a sign on the door to the property - ‘If you are a friend of a friend fuck off’. This didn’t endear us to the growing expat community, but it was an effective deterrent against ‘friends of friends’ who thought it was perfectly normal to come and visit us or, even worse, stay.

  I had a boat, a 20ft local prahu, a kind of outrigger used for transporting horses and cows between Bali, Lombok and Borneo. I named it the Gin Pahit, an Anglo-Malay term for ‘gin and bitters’. We made many fantastic journeys through the pristine islands of the beautiful Indonesian archipelago. If anything, these trips to Bali and the Far East just increased my passion to seek adventure and travel. The moment we became successful and opened an office in Jermyn Street, and I found myself in a suit going to work every day, I quit. I felt bad about leaving Harry. But I think he understood, and he went on to make a major success of the business.

  My experience on the Gin Pahit inspired me to think of sailing round the world. Financing the trip was not going to be easy. Sailing can be one of the most expensive occupations, likened to tearing up ten pound notes while standing under a shower. But perhaps I could follow in the footsteps, of rather the wake, of my intrepid ancestor Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Keppel, and write a bestselling book? My maternal grandmother, who was immensely proud of her sailing ancestors and had written a book about them herself, might act as a secret weapon in helping me persuade my parents to release the last funds I possessed in the world. As soon as I’d secured the minimum necessary, I set off for Thailand to stay with friends, find a boat and plan my journey.

  An amazing tale, told to me in the early hours of the morning in a bar in Bangkok, gave me the bestselling angle I’d been looking for. I should have remembered never to believe a story told under the influence of too much drink. Apparently, during the Second World War, a very young Catalina flying-boat captain used to fly regular missions from Sydney to Bougainville on Papua New Guinea, to supply the allies against the invading Japanese. His flight path took him over a beautiful island called Rennell, with a large volcanic cobalt blue lake at its centre. As he swept low over the lake, he saw hundreds of canoes, paddled by beautiful, topless girls with flowers in their long oiled hair. They would wave at him longingly and blow him kisses. He would wave back longingly and return the kisses. It all became too much for him. He landed the flying boat on the lake, sunk it and entered paradise. My friend paused for a moment, took a long gulp of beer, before uttering the words that would seal my fate. ‘Apparently,’ he said ‘He is still there. He has many wives and many children. His name is Sexy Tyler.’ How could I resist? I was going to sail to Rennell, find this elusive character living in paradise and write his story.

  I bought a boat, found a more experienced sailing companion, Tim, and eventually we set off from Fiji. Although it was the hurricane season, I was determined to haul anchor. We’d lost too much time restoring the 28-foot, eight-ton, twin-keeled yacht and I was terrified that Sexy Tyler would die before I arrived. But we never made it to Rennell.

  It was sunrise on a glorious Friday morning as we motored quietly out of the lagoon into the vast Pacific Ocean and headed due west to our first port of call, the New Hebrides, or as they are known now, Vanuatu.

  In our rush to get going I had forgotten to buy a sextant, but Tim did not seem concerned. ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured me. ‘I’ll navigate by dead reckoning. Vanuatu is due west. We’ll follow the sun. I know a bit about astrology. I’ll set the course on auto pilot.’ I gulped. ‘Dead reckoning’. I didn’t like the sound of this.

  I was right to be concerned. We nearly died on that first passage. It usually takes a maximum of four days to reach the New Hebrides from Fiji. You really can’t miss these islands. There are around twenty in the archipelago and the majority are very large. Somehow it took us fourteen days. We ran out of food and more importantly water. We were forced to drink distilled seawater. I had also run out of cigarettes. In desperation, I started cutting up rope and rolling it in newspaper to smoke. And it was here that my love-hate relationship with sharks intensified.

  I’ve always admired them, but facing starvation I also came to hate them. I’d sit with my legs hanging over the stern, holding a long line stretching out about a hundred metres or so into the wake. Fish were abundant in those days and every few minutes I’d feel a tug and pull the line in as quickly as possible. As I reeled in, there would be another tug, a more violent one and the line went limp. The sharks had taken not only the fish, but the lure and the hook as well.

  We eventually made land at Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu on the island of Efate. I remember cheers of derision from the locals in the port bar as we limped in, and they toasted us with ice-cold Fosters. I could taste the drops of condensation on the tins as I looked at them. Never had a cold beer tasted so good. As we took our first long gulps an earthquake hit the island. Clutching our tins of beer, we ran out as the bar disintegrated around us. An ominous sign, perhaps?

  We re-victualled, cleaned up the boat and headed north-west to the capital of the Soloman Islands, Honaira. We anchored about half a mile offshore, opposite the yacht club. We heard that a hurricane was approaching, put down storm anchors and waited nervously. Then news came that the hurricane would miss Honiara, but that we should expect strong winds. Tim decid
ed it would be better to head for open sea, rather than be near land. I was not convinced, but respected my captain’s experience. I went to start the engine. It would not start. It had totally seized up. If the hurricane was to hit us we were sitting ducks. It was April Fool’s Day – April 1st 1982.

  Hurricanes are fickle, and this one turned round and hit us at full force. Everything happened so fast. Wind speeds soared to 60 knots onshore. This is why Tim had tried to get out into the open sea. Yachts are designed, when hit sideways, to roll 360 degrees, to capsize and right themselves again. You lose your masts and most of your deck structure, but you can survive. If you’re hit head on, the boat will pitchpole – flip backwards and break in half. The waves were now seven metres, crashing over the stern and sweeping onto the deck. The boat was like a bucking bronco – one moment sitting on her stern, the next burying her prow in the waves.

  Tim and I were being hurled around in the main cabin, trying to grab anything to hold on to. Then the galley stove came off its hinges and hit Tim on the side of his head, opening a deep wound. I decided we had to get off, otherwise we were dead. I managed to tie Tim to one of the 20 litre plastic jerry cans used for storing water and I literally flung him overboard. I quickly followed. I don’t remember anything else. The next thing I knew, strong hands were pulling me out of the massive pounding surf. We found ourselves huddled in the yacht club holding cups of hot tea. We were both cut to pieces, lacerated by the coral while being swept ashore.