Travels on my Elephant by Mark Shand

Author:Mark Shand [Mark Shand]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780600079
Publisher: Eland Publishing
Published: 2012-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

13

Full Control Ceremony

WE STARTED THE steep ascent of the South Bihar highlands, leading to the great ranges of the Chota Nagpur Plateau, which eventually wind downwards to the flatlands of the Indo-Gangetic plain and our final destination of Sonepur.

The gradient became progressively steeper, our path often blocked by boulders which had been swept down the hillsides during the monsoons. In places we were confronted by fallen trees, which Tara threw aside like twigs. In the early morning, the narrow tracks, lined with lantana bushes, became a tunnel of sparkling cobwebs filled with fat, black and yellow spiders which, being venomous, terrified me. Tara decided that a straight line was the best approach, and I spent hours wielding the ankush, brushing the spiders out of my face and then panicking as I felt something crawling down my bare back.

The sal forests were being systematically destroyed by the local villagers, for cash and for new fields. In deep valleys between the hills, the remaining topsoil and the trapped water yielded good rice crops and, on the peaks, where only a few trees remained, ‘Jhoom’, or slash and burn cultivation, was taking place.

We reached the summit of the South Bihar highlands and made camp, affording a fine view of the Chota Nagpur plateau, a watery blue massif in the distance. The tribals of this area, the Bhumias, are a wild and shy people, hunters who rightly claim that the forest belongs to them. Animists with long flowing hair, they wore head and arm bands made from snake vertebrae and knotted red loin-cloths. Most of them carried axes instead of bows and arrows, adopting an easier form of survival. They seemed out of place in this devastated landscape.

In the middle of the night Tara trumpeted loudly. I rushed over and found her straining at her chains, rapping her trunk on the ground and then signalling with it towards some bushes. I threw a bomb into the darkness. There was a scrabbling in the undergrowth and, in the beam of a torch, I saw the bushy back of a bear charging down the hill. I felt sorry for the creature, which must have been sauntering home, self-absorbed in the custom of bears, his belly full, to doze through the daylight hours in his lair. Confronted by this enormous and enraged elephant hissing and trumpeting loudly, he probably suffered terrible indigestion.

The next day, at a village called Biribanki we disturbed a colony of bats that blackened the sky and then returned to hang like clusters of black grapes from the trees. The villagers were disappointed to find that we were unable to shoot them as we were not carrying firearms. In this region bats are considered a great delicacy.

We reached a deep, impassable nullah or ravine. Indrajit coaxed the jeep carefully but when it could go no further he doubled back and arranged to meet us in a few days at Sarwada. We loaded Tara with provisions and set off, glad to be rid of the jeep and its mechanical problems.

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