The elephant march begins. Everything else takes a back seat. The traffic comes to a stand still as these placid pachyderms plod slowly across the main road and down through the drag of tourist stalls that for once are wary of displaying their wares and souvenirs. The mahouts marshal their charges through these stalls, chary that the elephants are female and their penchant for retail therapy. The shopkeepers are equally mistrustful and do not advertise but rather chastise those showing too much of an interest in what is on sale.

Down the slope the elephants plod, leaving their spoor and dung on the muddy path. Their destination: the river, relief from the midday sun and hours of splashing about in the water.

It is a quaint scene viewed by a handful of tourists on a daily basis with much enjoyment and clicking of cameras.

The babies are bound to feature highly in any obligatory viewing of tourist snaps back home. Perhaps not the unfortunate three-legged female who had the misfortune of standing on a land mine. Missing the lower half of her front left leg she makes a sad and ungainly progress to the river. Her movement is stilted and crablike as she awkwardly negotiates the terrain. Her spine is twisted and deformed with years of effort. Her strained progress wins me over. Yes, the exuberant playfulness of the babies is delightful and enchanting, but when the three-legged elephant leans her backside against a rock so that she can take the pressure off her stump, which she rests human-like against her good front leg, I am won over….