With characteristic generosity my friend had put his house at my disposal.
But do not worry, sir,’ he added brightly. ‘But you are having a companion, I think.’ ‘You are married, yes,’ he stated wisely. I perspired, worried and developed prickly heat – and I had only been there a few days. Roads were awash, taxis broke down, peacocks screamed. Black, swollen clouds brought the usual rain, humidity and chaos. When I arrived in Delhi it was my ladder that was too short. Once through, India embraces you, but that was something I had yet to learn. You try to climb the wall – you fall you fetch a ladder – it is too short but if you are patient a brick will loosen and then another. INDIA SHOWS WHAT she wants to show, as if her secrets are guarded by a wall of infinite height. I just had to find one and ride to the fair. After all, I now had a goal – a place to sell it. I decided to leave for India immediately certain that I would find an elephant once I got there. It was now the beginning of August and the Mela was not for another four months.
Book of travels skills full#
It happens sometime at the end of November, depending on the full moon.’ I went three years ago and must have seen three hundred elephants. Elephants, cattle and horses have been sold there for centuries. The Sonepur Mela in Bihar, the world’s largest animal fair. ‘On the other hand I know where you can get one. Her writing paper ‘ELEPHANT OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION’ announced what surely must be the most exclusive club in the world: No, I could not buy her elephant, she wrote indignantly. I wrote asking if I could buy her elephant. There she became obsessed with the elephant that so enriches Kerala’s ceremonies and festivals. A scholar and talented photographer, she spent ten years in Kerala documenting the religious rituals of southern India. Pepita Seth is an unconventional English woman, married to one of India’s finest actors. I just imagined myself climbing aboard and setting off. ‘To be frank, I haven’t really given it much thought yet.’ In fact, I had not thought about it at all. ‘All right, I’ll see what I can do.’ I could hear the resignation in his voice. India is full of elephants, but what are you going to do with it when you leave? I don’t see your parents taking kindly to it residing in Sussex. ‘Yes, I want to buy an elephant,’ I shouted to him, as if this was the most usual of requests. Now I was telephoning a friend in New Delhi.
How could I go wrong? It seemed I had chosen a most practical and agreeable travelling companion.
Book of travels skills skin#
Flies are much attracted by their smell and as they settle on their backs they wrinkle up their skin deepening its tight folds They have a great dread of the grunting of pigs and they delight in rivers. If it should chance to meet a drove or flock of sheep, it puts them aside with its trunk so as to avoid trampling upon them with its feet and it never injures others unless it is provoked. It is so peaceable that its nature does not allow it willingly to injure creatures less powerful than itself. If one of them should come upon a man alone who has lost his way, he puts him back peacefully in the path from which he has wandered. They are mild in disposition and are conscious of dangers. The great elephant has by nature qualities which rarely occur among men, namely probity, prudence and a sense of justice. From the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, I received sound information: I rushed to the library where I read a few classics on elephants. With or without God’s leave I was determined to have my picture expressed in my next book sitting upon an elephant. When he reached the court of the great Moghul Emperor Jahangir, he wrote: ‘I have rid upon an elephant since I came to this court, determining one day (by God’s leave) to have my picture expressed in my next booke sitting upon an elephant.’ I was now obsessed. It was Tom Coryat, the eccentric Englishman who travelled to India overland in 1615, on foot, on twopence a day. Staring jovially at me from the page was a bewhiskered gentleman, wearing a dashing plumed hat, sitting nonchalantly astride an elephant. I took it with me and forgot about it – at least I thought I had.Ī few days later I opened a book on India. The drawing was of an infuriated male elephant about to charge a little Indian mahout or elephant driver. This idea evolved from a drawing I had discovered while clearing out my grandmother’s house after she had died. This time, I had decided on a quiet jaunt across India on an elephant. The last time I had been restless, I ended up being pursued by cannibals in Indonesia. Even through the hiss and static of the long-distance connection I could detect the apprehension in the voice. ‘AM I RIGHT in assuming that you want to buy an elephant?’ the voice from New Delhi shouted down the telephone to me in London.
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