It’s not as if I had a lifelong interest in elephants. It was only when my grandmother died, and I was going through all her papers, that something sparked my interest. She had meticulously kept everything, and I came across a photograph of a painting of a mahout [elephant handler] being chased by a wild tusker, a male elephant. I don’t know what happened, but this elephant just got in to my head. Then over the months, it was as if I couldn’t open a book without elephants coming in to it in some way.
I thought, that’s it — I’ll go to
India and buy an elephant. I planned to ride it
across India, which I wrote about in my book
Travels on My Elephant. I don’t know what it was about Tara, a young female I found. I was just drawn to her. I didn’t even look at the other elephants. She was just perfect, I just knew and I chose her. The old mahout kept asking why I was choosing her and I said ‘I don’t know, there’s something about her, she’s beautiful’. She wasn’t in good shape, but all I can say is that it was like falling in love.
There is an expression in Assamese which means “the gift of an elephant” — you make a gift to an elephant, after it’s stopped working for you, by giving it its freedom back. People said ‘you’ve done your bit, you’ve saved an elephant.’ But I began to realise as the years went on that the Asian elephant was very endangered, which is why we started Elephant Family.
Deforestation and conflict with humans means their numbers are plummeting. It’s impossible to save all Asian elephants, so you have to look at the viable populations. Elephant Family is working on awareness, as well as conservation projects. One thing we are doing is creating ‘corridors’ — tracts of land which link areas where groups of elephants can safely roam to find food, and to meet other herds.
It often involves resettling villages, so it’s a long ongoing project. It is also very expensive. We are hoping that Elephant Parade — where we are installing 250 life-size elephants across London this summer, decorated by artists — will raise £2million. I would be very happy if there were four of five viable large populations of elephants in India within my lifetime.
Read more about India and the Elephant Parade and watch our video of Mark Shand talking about elephants. To find out more about Mark Shand’s charities visit elephantfamily.org and elephantparadelondon.org.
