Rating: 
Summary: What a read!
Review: 'To the Elephant Graveyard' is a truly brilliant travel book. It's unlike anything in the genre I have read before. It fuses the hunt for a rogue elephant with touching and vivid travel writing, taking the reader on a gripping journey through North East India, a part of the country in turmoil. Hall's unassuming insight and his powerful narrative voice makes this a real page turned. I cannot recommend this book enough.
Rating:
Summary: What a Strangely Pleasant Book,in a Grizzly Way
Review: A horrifing serial killer is loose in the north Indian state of Assam. He has claimed 38 victims. Horrible murders, all have literally been beat into pulp. Additionally,some are impaled-some receive a final crushed head. The killer is most cunning. He lays ambushes, he is even capable of tracking a victim to his home,destroying the house to make his kill. For some he will bury his evidence,others are left to rot so others will see what may await them. The populace is powerless to stop the killer and demand relief. The government decides that these killings will end. There will be no need for a trial. An execution contract is put out for bid. Who steps forward but India's greatest elephant hunter- Dinesh Choudhury. Elephant hunter? Yes, that's right, our serial killer is a terribly cunning and dangerous rogue elephant! Choudhury assembles a seasoned team including a war decorated Gurkha tracker and elephant professionals-mahouts- with their own trained elephants. While Choudhury has accepted the execution contract,he is not sure he will complete the killing. He wonders why the rogue is bent on this road of human destruction? Is it possible to reform the rogue..to separate him into the wild? If not, will he have the strength to finish the rogue before the elephant can kill him?Choudhury endeavors to learn the elephant's story and move toward a final decision all the while closing in on the killer. You see not only is Choudhury India's greatest elephant hunter but he also deeply loves and respects them all. To this strange crime story comes a British journalist-Tarquin Hall- our author. Indeed a strange tale,but true none the less. As the mystery unfolds,Hall fills in the atmosphere of the crime scene. He tells of Northern India, it's people,sights,history..just like a good traveloge. He also tells us much about elephants and what they mean to north Indians,so there's a little zoology. There it is.... a zoological traveloge murder mystery hunting book. I can't say I've ever read such an odd mix of ideas. But it all melds well and in the end it's a surprisingly pleasant read.
Rating: 
Summary: Real life travel/adventure story reads like a novel
Review: As you can tell from my moniker, I am a lover of elephants. So it was with some trepidation that I bought this book (against my wife's advice) to read about a modern version of George Orwell's short story "Shooting an Elephant." Here, it seems that a rogue elephant has gone berserk in India and is killing a number of Indians for no apparent reason.The narrator, an AP reporter, catches up with the hunter who has been retained by the local government to kill the elephant. The hunter, Mr. Chowdhury, is, strangely, a lover of animals, especially elephants. There is some nice discussion of why he nevertheless takes tasks like this one. The book takes Hall (the narrator), Chowdhury, and others (mostly elephant riders) on a hunt for the rogue throughout northeastern India. They have a number of interludes, some of which are funny, others tragic, until the final confrontation. Along the way, we learn a bit about why the elephant was going berserk. Hall has a nice, unobtrusive writing style. It's not flashy, and he knows enough to let the narrative momentum carry the book, although he throws in occasional travel- or history-related discussions of the local Indian culture. For example, he recounts the myth of why the Indian god Ganesh has the head of an elephant. (The gods had to replace his head after an accident, and an elephant was the first creature they saw.) I was afraid that I would find this book incredibly sad and painful (see Barbara Gowdy's "The White Bone"), but instead, it was very saistfying. It's still sad about the rogue elephant, but maybe because it's not as senseless as poaching, the story, while sad, is understandable.
Rating: 
Summary: disappointing
Review: I had high hopes for this book. It had potential: the setting in India, a unique story line, the promise of adventure and danger, crusty British tea planters, shades of Kipling and the Raj. But it just doesn't deliver. Tarquin Hall is a British reporter working for the AP in New Delhi. He is bored with his desk job. When he comes across news reports of a rogue elephant on the rampage in Assam in northeast India he persuades his editor to let him cover the story. In Assam he meets Dinesh Choudhury, the hunter assigned to kill the animal. What follows is an account of the chase. Unfortunately, Hall has an irritatingly clunky, awkward writing style. Some of his comments can be self-serving. More seriously, he displays a slightly patronising attitude towards the Indians, in particular his trusty mahout sidekicks Churchill, Mole, and Badger who represent the book's relentless "comic relief" element. It is all faintly embarrassing. The taciturn hunter Dinesh Choudhury is the most fascinating character in the book primarily because, I suspect, he does not offer Hall much opportunity to ridicule him. Hall treats him with wary respect. He must have found the hunter frustrating. Ultimately we do not know much about Mr. Choudhury. I would like to have learned more. An unsatisfying book.
Rating:
Summary: Adventure!!
Review: I thought 'The Perfect Storm' was the perfect book. Its combination of pure adventure and deep research made it impossible to put down. Then came along 'To the Elephant Graveyard'. It has the same happy combination, this time taking place on dry land. Hall writes in clear, journalistic prose that never gets in the way of a tale. But he also provides fascinating stories about India and its elephants. As for the famed elephant graveyard of the title, Hall does manage to find it. In the perfect ending to an almost perfect book, the author stands on a hill and gazes at what he has searched for during the entire adventure. It is a scene that will not be forgotten quickly by the reader.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book to About Assam and About Elephant Hunting
Review: It is a great travel book that, as one review says, 'wonderfully hits on all cylinders'; and I, being from the sate of Assam, can vouch for that. Mr Hall ventured into Assam, the remote North-East corner of India, and accompanied Mr Chaudhury, the Assamese Elephant Hunter in his wild journey across the roads and paddy fields of Assam. In the process, Mr. Hall not only gave a gripping portrayal of his close encounter with elephant hunting in Assam, a state famous for elephants from ancient days, but he also described about Assamese life and culture. He narrates his meeting with Mr Gaela, the greatest elephant catcher (bor-phendi) of Assam, in whose house he ate authentic Assamese dish, 'patot-diya-mas'(fish cooked in banana leaf). He also described his brief encounter with the some ULFA insurgents of Assam in its reality. Mr Hall did not forget to capture the scinic beauty of Assam. I liked his following narative which seem to capture Assam in its totality:
"Despite the staggering beauty and rich folklore, India's North-East is a part of the world avoided by even the most intrepid backpackers. As such there was little in my guidebook about Assam: it has been off-limits to tourists for many years. However it did say thay that the word Assam is derived from the Sanskrit word 'asama' meaning 'peerless'. or 'unequalled'. It was so named by the Thai or Shan invaders called the Ahoms who conquered the valley in the thirteenth century and loved it so much that they never left. I was beginning to appreciate why. Whenever I looked, the landscape was lush and green. Rickety wooden bridges spanned streams and brooks whose surfaces were covered with sweet smelling water lilly blossoms. Peepul trees, their branches straining under flocks of white birds that suddenly lifted intothe air at the sound of our approach, lined the road. In the distance, hills bristling with jungle rose up above the fields, mist crawling across the foliage and pouring down into the valley like amoke brimming off a witch's cauldron,"
Mr Hall is also keen to catch a lively conversation with Rudra, the betel nut chewing driver as noted in the following excerpt:
"Rudra, the driver of the Hindusthan Ambassador, had been chewing paan all night. He kept his stash in a stainless steel dabha, an Indian lunch box, in his glove compartment and periodically would ask me to take it out and open it for him. Keeping an eye on the road, he would first extract a lump of lime paste with index finger and smear it into the space between his teeeth and his bottom lip. He would then pop one or two choice chunksof betel nut into his mouth. Finally, uttering a satisfied grunt, he would start to chew.....By Indian stadrds, Rudra was a good driver - that is to say, we only came close to death once during more than six hours on the road....
By now, I was in no mood for conversation. All I wanted to do was sleep. I tried conveying this to Rudra, but even when I closed my eyes and pretended to snore, he kept up his one sided, tedius conversation. His main interest in life, apart from betel nut and playing chicken with oncoming heavt vehicles, was the vital statistics of Bombay's Hindi film actresses. The latest goddess to grace the Indian screen, Karishma Kapoor, had won a special place in his heart - and, no doubt in his fantacies.
"She is the most beautiful pearl of our continent!" he boasted, pushing the Ambassador into fourth gear around a tight bend.
He slapped me hard on the thigh and guffawed, grunting and breathing through his nose and mouth simultaneously, a feat that would have been remarkable had it not been so revolting.
"You should see her dance! Her legs go all the way up! And for her breasts - they are big! As big as mangoes!"
I reccommend this book to anyone who wants to know about Assam or wants to travel to Assam.
Rajen Barua, Houston, Texas
Rating: 
Summary: fun to read, not a great writer
Review: Tarquin Hall is not a great travel writer in the mode of Alexander Frater ("Chasing the Monsoon"), not to mention Twain or Theroux; he does not have that level of control over the language and the ability to make a scene jump to life. But he has great material here, and he does quite well with it. Having been to Assam, I recognize the place and the people. The author hams it up a bit at the end about how he just could not understand that he was being shown the elephant graveyard, and it is then that you realize that this is the novelized version, with a carefully designed climactic moment. But in general his desciptions are reasonably vivid and credible. Worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Can't wait for his next book
Review: This book argues strongly against mankind's misuse and overdevelopment of the land that once belonged to noble beasts such as the Asian elephant. I became captivated by the story and by the author's sympathetic stance towards the elephant. The book will make you mourn what is happening to wild animals, and it reaffirms that when mankind messes with animals, the animals are the ones who get destroyed. Mankind's ultimate destruction might take a bit longer .... This is a thoughtful book with an element of magic -- the myth of an elephant graveyard that grounds the more realistic, down-to-earth elements of Hall's adventure account. I would love to read more of this author's adventures, esp. if they involve magnificent animals. Hall has a journalist's eye, yet he creates moments in which you feel you are there, under the stars, hearing the sounds of the jungle with him, waiting in fear of the thunderous sound that will signal that the rogue elephant is near. It is a very fast read -- a bit like a suspense novel -- but what I appreciated most was its folkloric touch, Hall's hope to find the mythic elephant graveyard, and the sense that animals are mysterious and magical, and that our world is impoverished with each death of a spectacular animal like the elephant. Last but not least, this nonfiction book would make an amazing film.
Rating:
Summary: What a blast!
Review: This is a great read. Like all good books, it is an amalgamation of many things: a memoir, a travelogue, a social & environmental critique, and a great adventure with a dash of mystery and lots of humor. The title is a bit stodgy, but the story is far from it. We really see India in a different light, a land both benign and disturbingly fatalistic. Tarquin manages to couple some very visceral descriptions of locales with a profound appreciation for India and the elephant that is rarely seen in literature. Tarquin is going to mature into a great travel writer someday soon. Meanwhile, somebody give this man a prize ($) so he can dash off on another adventure (so we can read about it in his next book).
Rating:
Summary: What a blast!
Review: This is a great read. Like all good books, it is an amalgamation of many things: a memoir, a travelogue, a social & environmental critique, and a great adventure with a dash of mystery and lots of humor. The title is a bit stodgy, but the story is far from it. We really see India in a different light, a land both benign and disturbingly fatalistic. Tarquin manages to couple some very visceral descriptions of locales with a profound appreciation for India and the elephant that is rarely seen in literature. Tarquin is going to mature into a great travel writer someday soon. Meanwhile, somebody give this man a prize ($) so he can dash off on another adventure (so we can read about it in his next book).
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