Epic final journey of my uncle, the wild warrior
Our mission: to scatter Mark Shand’s ashes in India after a tuk-tuk trek to meet the gentle giant he loved
‘We are united by one man… and one beast’ ‘We’re in sardine cans with hairdryer engines’
BUCCANEER, raconteur, tireless campaigner for the Asian elephant, and brother of the Duchess of Cornwall, Mark Shand’s unexpected death last year left a huge hole, none bigger than in the heart of his nephew, MoS food writer Tom Parker Bowles. Here, in a humorous and moving account, Tom recounts how family and friends finally said goodbye – by taking part in a quite improbable 5,000-mile journey...
SO THIS is it, the end of the tale, the final full stop. To a beautiful patch of sand by the sacred Banjar river, with Mark’s family, and his elephant and a handful of his ashes. God, he would have loved this.
His daughter, Ayesha, sister Annabel and assorted adoring nieces and nephews. Plus Aditya Patankar, his great old mucker. And Tara, of course, the 60-year-old pachyderm and second great love of his life after Ayesha. At this very moment, in the violet-tinged gloaming, Tara is attempting to eat the wreath of flowers hanging from her mighty neck.
Mark’s ashes came with Annabel, via plane and car. The old-fashioned way, you might say, nearly 5,000 miles from rain-lashed England to soft-dusked Madhya Pradesh.
The rest of us arrived via tuk-tuk, a 310-mile voyage across India, starting in Khajarho, whose erotic temples, with their athletic depictions, gave us so much glee when I was there aged 18, back in 1994, with Mark and my cousin Ben Elliott. ‘Dream on boys,’ Mark would growl at Ben and me, as we relayed tales of stone-carved positions, tions, both ancient and impossible. ‘If I can’t manage them, then you two halfwits have no chance.’ At the time we were working in Kipling Camp in Kanha National Park, where Tara has lived for the past 21 years.
This is how Mark wanted it to be: half his ashes scattered over The Laines, his idyllic childhood home in Sussex. The other half, at his spiritual home, India.
He would have adored the tuk-tuk bit too, a fundraising journey called Travels To My Elephant: 42 motor rickshaws, filled with folk from every walk of life. Professors and supermodels, hedge funders and artists, ex-coppers and accountants, actors, enthusiasts, estate agents, film makers, writers, cooks, art dealers and tycoons. All of us united byy one man and one great beast.
Writer, explorer, adventurer. Heroic smoker, magnificent swearer. Adored father, brother, uncle and friend. And passionate-to-the-point-of-obsession conservationist. He would do anything,
anything, to fight for the future of his adored elephants.
He died last year, way too soon, in the most freakish and mundane of accidents, falling and smashing his head on a cold, drab New York pavement, an hour or so after raising more than $1 million for Elephant Family, the charity he founded to save the Asian elephant from extinction.
Elephant Family was his life, and it works tirelessly with local people and non-governmental organisations alike, striving to separate ele-- phantsh sufferingff i fromf catastrophichi habitat loss from the hard-working folk whose lives and livelihoods are at risk from herds of rampaging, frightened, hungry pachyderms.
Every penny raised on Travels To My Elephant will go towards the setting up of safe elephant corridors, where these awesome beasts can roam free and unhindered, safe from guns, anger and an almost certain death.
Family. Friends. Elephants. India. Mark’s greatest loves, rolled into one delectable dosa. The only one missing was my mother, who is on a tour of Australasia with her husband, Prince Charles. She worries about us in the rickshaws. Quite rightly. Thank Christ she didn’t hear the safety speech, at the start of our
race, from Martin da Costa,Cos our unflappable andd quietlyi lb brilliant general. ‘Your rickshaw is not designed for 300mile journeys. It has a top speed of 30 to 37mph, is not stable, has lousy brakes, a tiny petrol tank, almost no suspension and a tendency to topple over.’
We had all thought this a jolly, rather English lark, done very much in Mark’s unquenchable spirit of adventure. But soon our smug smiles are melting like kulfi in the midday sun. We are driving little more than a sardine can with a hairdryer engine, on some of the most frantic, chaotic and downright dangerous roads in the world. ‘The whole thing does seem rather mad,’ my mother had texted. ‘Couldn’t you just get there by car?’
She had a point. Still, we’re on the threshold of raising £2million for Elephant Family, so every last bump, swerve and near miss seems worth it. And the whole event is imbued with Mark’s soul. Not just the tale of his family, on our way to bid that final, permanent adieu. But every single racer, miles removed from their comfort zone, inspired by Mark, Tara and the elephants. Despite his gaping absence, it was so very him – the challenge, the Bombay Mix of people, the spirit of eccentric escapade.
He loved India, far more than he ever did England. Here, he felt complete, satisfied, fundamentally at peace. This was his destiny, the place he was born to be, among the crowds and cacophony, where intoxicating madness and primal mysticism stained deep into the fabric of his life. Mark wasn’t a religious man, but he was pragmatic, and spiritual too.
A small statue of Ganesha, roughly moulded from lead, sits at the front of our rickshaw. We buy it after Martin’s briefing. ‘Unfortunately,’ he had told us, ‘in the general pecking order of the Indian road, you are very near the bottom. You will be pushed around, cut up, beeped at and disrespected by pretty much every other vehicle on the road.’ The M4, this ain’t.
‘India shows what she wants to show,’ Mark wrote in his book
Travels On My Elephant, ‘as if her secrets are guarded by a wall of infinite height. 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. Once through, though, India embraces you.’
At the start of our journey we failed to scale that wall. It was often hard and frequently petrifying.
Cars tend to sit quietly on open, clear stretches, then overtake on blind corners. Huge, diesel-belching monster trucks have no interest in the correct lane. Where they go, we avoid. They roar up behind us, their horns shaking us to our very gut, then overtake, and we wobble, terrified, in their slipstream.
Cows, sacred in the Hindu religion, are a constant and stubborn menace. They’re partial to a kip in the centre of main road, or they lollop and meander, choosing to step out at the precise moment you’re passing. Ben reckons it’s revenge for all the beef we’ve ever eaten. The burger bites back.
Dogs do the same, materialising feet in front of your wheel, as do goats, great herds of them, skipping, and bleating. If you’ve grown up driving on these roads, then fine. But I learnt to drive in Wiltshire.
Occasionally, in the backfire of engines, or the grumble of gears, we hear Mark’s throaty laugh. ‘Not so f*****g fast, old bean’, or ‘Christ, you nearly hit that cow.’ Concentration is key, you can’t drift off for a moment. Otherwise you hit a pot hole, or cow, or dog, or goat. Or a scooter, wobbling beneath a family of five.
‘In India,’ Mark would growl, ‘keep in with the gods. Suck up to them. Ganesha and Shiva especially. This is no place for the atheist.’ As we quickly find out, Indian drivers look ahead, rather than dwelling on what’s behind. Mark shared this philosophy.
Yet his love for India was intense and all-encompassing. He was equally at ease with Maharajas and in mud huts. One moment, he’d be taking silver-plated tiffin in the high-ceilinged opulence of the palace of his great friend, The Maharani of Jaipur, the next he’d be sipping hot, sweet, spiced Chai from a crude clay cup on some dusty, dirty Orissa by-road.
He’d spend a few nights with another old friend, Bubjee Jodhpur – the Maharajah of Jodhpur – in his cool, marble-clad fortress before racing off south, to spend a week sleeping under the stars.
We pass water buffalo carts and ruined temples; tiny, roadside shrines; tons of rubbish. We see women, dressed in colours that sing, carrying wood, hay, water and spare tyres, on their head. Crowds number two to 200 and we see grinning children and feel the huge-hearted hospitality of this great, glorious land.
The air is heavy with wood smoke, incense and dung, all those scents that make India so visceral, sensual and exciting. One night we stop in a tented camp, vast and magnificent, a testament to the Quintessentially Foundation and its impeccable organisation of the whole trip. There are loos, showers, exceptional Indian food and a late-night screening of one of Mark’s films. As his voice booms out through the candlelit wilderness, it feels both reassuring and very sad.
Then suddenly, we’re there, at the journey’s end, among tears and grins and beeps of horns and the banging of ceremonial drums. We’ve come 310 miles to Kanha, 5,000 miles from England, to the bank of the sacred river Banjar.
‘Kipling Camp nestled in a grove of trees,’ Mark wrote in Travels, ‘rows of little white-washed bungalows, surrounded by luxuriant forest, where Tara could gather her fodder. Nearby, a clean river flowed, spilling into deep rock pools. Tara could not have found a better home. It was wonderfully peaceful.’ It still is.
Tara loves this river, as did Mark. He spent hours down here with the old girl, scrubbing and splashing and swimming. I half expect him to emerge from behind Tara, dripping wet, a grin plastered across his face.
It’s dusk, and Tara is obviously older, but that stubborn, naughty glint is still there, dancing behind those heavily lashed lids. She combines huge bulk with exquisite, delicate elegance.
It’s just us now, i n the crepuscular softness, family and close friend. A pile of Mark’s ashes sit on a silver plate. They look, well, grey. But feel heavy, substantial, the sort of ashes you’d expect Mark to make. Three prayers are recited, from three holy men, Hindu, Muslim and Animist. ‘ Hedging ya bets,’ he would have said. A few flowers escape into the river’s gentle current. The ones Tara doesn’t manage to eat. She stands in the water, waving her trunk, searching for snacks, and playing to the crowd. Then suddenly, as Ayesha throws the ashes into the air, Tara becomes utterly still, as if she knows what’s going on. She must do. The last remaining blooms float down the river, as the sun finally drops over the horizon.
All is dark. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The view, so peaceful, so pulchritudinous, is momentarily blurred by tears. Our journey is over. So is Mark’s.
The battle for the elephants, though, has only just begun.