Mark Shand · 1991 · overland

Mark Shand's award-winning 1991 travelogue. On a whim, the English writer bought a scrawny, ill-treated elephant named Tara and rode her some six hundred miles across India, retracing an ancient elephant road from the Sun Temple at Konark to the great elephant fair at Sonepur. What began as an aristocratic lark became a love story between a man and an elephant, and turned Shand into a lifelong campaigner for the Asian elephant.

1. 1
   Konark

   Shand sets out from the Sun Temple on the Bay of Bengal with Tara, retracing an ancient elephant road.

2. 2
   The Eastern Ghats

   Inland through the ravines and forests of Orissa.

3. 3
   Through Bihar

   Along dusty back roads through villages unchanged for centuries.

4. 4
   Patna

   To the Ganges and Patna, the ancient capital of Pataliputra.

5. 5
   Sonepur

   And across the great river to the Sonepur Mela, the oldest elephant fair in the world.