The best way to see India, they say, is from a vantage-point on the back of an elephant and so Mark Shand acquired the services of 30-year-old Tara who was to carry him on a 1000-kilometres voyage of discovery through the heart of India.
What begins as an adventurous whim soon develops into an unlikely romance between man and beast as Tara blossoms from scrawny begging elephant into a charismatic star of the road. Their adventures en route for Sonepur Mela, the oldest elephant market in the world, are told with Shand's ear for the comic, his eye for the exotic and nose for bizarre incident. Mark Shand reads his own travel story.
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