Dehradun, July 8 -- The elephant that almost got us

All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian

Everyone has heard of the 'big 5' in the world of wildlife. Every safari tourist asks about the big 5 when in Africa and wants to capture it in film or image. In fact, I was recently in the rainforests of Borneo (which is naturally far removed from Africa) but there too the local boat operators had coined their own big 5 which even included a magnificent and rare bird (the Rhinoceros Hornbill, named so because its colourful beak had the appearance of a horn).

But the big 5 has quite a dark history going back to late 19th century. In the 1880s, the big game hunters from Europe used to go to Southern and Eastern Africa (their colonies ...