To the Elephant Graveyard. Tarquin Hall

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      To the Elephant Graveyard

      By the same author

      Mercenaries, Missionaries and Misfits: Adventures of an Under-Age Journalist

      To the Elephant Graveyard

      A True Story of the Hunt for a Man-killing Indian Elephant

      TARQUIN HALL

      Grove Press

      New York

      Copyright © 2000 by Tarquin Hall

      ‘Shooting an Elephant’ by George Orwell (© George Orwell 1936) is reproduced from The Complete Orwell (Secker & Warburg, 1998) by permission of A.M. Heath & Co. Ltd on behalf of Bill Hamilton as the Literary Executor of the late Sonia Bronwell Orwell and Secker & Warburg Ltd

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      First published in 2000 by John Murray (Publishers) A division of Hodder Headline

      Published simultaneously in Canada

      Printed in the United States of America

      eISBN 978-0-8021-5838-3

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

      Grove Press

      an imprint of Grove Atlantic

      154 West 14th Street

      New York, NY 10011

      Distributed by Publishers Group West

       groveatlantic.com

      For Dinesh Choudhury

      in gratitude for his kindness and unfailing hospitality

      Contents

       List of Illustrations

       Map

       1. The Hit

       2. The Game Is Afoot

       3. The Elephant Wars

       4. Bruiser Harry

       5. The Horse Might Talk

       6. Shoot to Kill

       7. The Plot Thickens

       8. The Pool of Ganesha

       9. Death of a Mahout

       10. A Rendezvous with Terrorists

       11. The Rogue’s Last Stand

       12. To the Elephant Graveyard

       Author’s Note

       Bibliography

       Illustrations

List of Illustrations

       1. The Brahmaputra

       2. Sunset over the Karbi Anglong Hills

       3. On the trail of the rogue elephant

       4. Churchill, mahout and head of the elephant squad

       5. Collecting fodder in Kaziranga National Park

       6. Chander, assistant mahout

       7. An elephant’s bath

       8. Elephant theft

       9. Measuring the rogue’s footprints

       10. A forest guard

       11. The elephant’s grave

      All the photographs were taken by the author.

      The Place where Elephants Die

      Hidden away from the haunts of men, west of a widespread lake,

      Out of the scope of human ken, in tangled thicket and brake,

      ’Mid arching trees where a foetid breeze ruffles the ragged sky,

      Is the sombre place where the vanishing race of the elephants come to die.

      Cullen Gouldsbury, Songs out of Exile

Map

1

      The Hit

      ‘Man and the higher animals, especially the primates, have some few instincts in common. All have the same senses, intuitions, and sensations, similar passions, affections, and emotions, even the complex ones such as jealousy, suspicion, emulation, gratitude and magnanimity; they practise deceit and are revengeful . . .’

      Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

      The elephant came in the dead of night. At first, he moved silently through the isolated hamlet, past the cottages, bungalows and huts where the inhabitants had long been fast asleep. Past the meeting-house, the fish-pond and the village shop. Past the cigarette stall, the water pump and the temple, dedicated to Hanuman, the monkey god.

      The tusker crossed the rickety wooden bridge that spanned the village stream and turned east, following the sandy lane for several hundred yards. Here, he took a short cut over a field, breaking down one or two fences and trampling rows of cabbages underfoot. Soon, he passed another clutch of homes and a primary school.

      For some unexplained reason, none of these buildings attracted his attention. Indeed his tracks, when examined the next morning, showed that he failed to stop even once along his chosen path. Instead, he continued to the edge of the settlement, strode straight up to a bamboo hut belonging to a local farmer called Shom, uttered a shrill trumpet and then launched his devastating attack.

      Monimoy, a farmer from the same village, was a witness to what happened next. Now, two days later, he sat in the Assam Forest Department’s public affairs office, telling his story to P. S. Das, the information officer whom I had come to meet soon after my arrival in Guwahati.

      ‘I was making my way home after some drinking,’ said Monimoy. ‘I was walking in the lane when the elephant came. I watched what happened next with my own eyes!’

      The