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Assam, India -- As legions of wanderers will attest, travel to India has its substantial rewards. But it also has its risks -- malaria, dengue fever, plumbing problems and the old blunder of using the left hand when you should have used the right, among them. As of last fall, India-bound globe-trotters have something even bigger to give them pause: drunken elephants.
In late October of 1999, according to Associated Press and Reuters reports, a herd of renegade elephants terrorized the village of Prajapatibosti in the northeastern state of Assam. The illicit gang of 15 barged into several huts and "guzzled rice beer fermenting in casks."
Once inebriated, the delinquent pachyderms proceeded to go on a "drunken rampage," tearing through the village, destroying huts and threatening to crush anyone who stood in their way. After injuring six people, the beasts left the following morning -- but not before razing a few more huts and destroying several rice paddies.
Environmentalists blame the incidents on the elephants' ever-shrinking natural habitat. (Assam's forests cover a mere 20 percent of its total area.) Some citizens, however, feel the elephants themselves are to blame. In 1997, after 23 people in the region were killed by elephants, inhabitants demanded retribution and launched protests, including hunger strikes, to get it.
When the animals failed to respond to government attempts to scare them with warning gunshots, the state applied for and received permission to take justice into their own hands by capturing any "rogue elephants."
The October rampage took place just a month after the Hindu celebration of Ganesh Chathurthi, which honors Lord Ganesh, elephant god of wisdom and obstacles.
