Save the elephant 🙂

“Hup-two-three-four, keep-it-up-two-three-four… !” Does that sound familiar from The Jungle Book?! That was Colonel Hathi marching his elephant patrol through the jungle. Well, Mumbai had its very own elephant parade with 101 elephants.

This was part of a worldwide awareness campaign to save the Asian elephant, which is now an endangered animal. The Parade hosts 101 life-size baby elephant statues decorated with vibrant multi-colour paintings, brass work, jade stones and many other styles.

The Parade campaign was started in 2006 by a man called Marc Spitz and his son Mike who felt for these elephants after Marc visited Thailand, Asia. Since then, Parades have taken place in London, Amsterdam, Chiang Mai, Sao Paulo, Copenhagen, Milan and many other cities.

The elephants are displayed and auctioned to the highest bidder. The money raised goes to an organisation called Elephant Family that works to save and provide medical facilities to injured elephants.

The Parade has been held 24 times in locations as varied as Netherlands, Hong Kong and London, with anything from 50 to 250 sculptures created by such artists as Katy Perry and Bryan Adams.

Flora – Tejal Gala 

Untitled – Sunu Ailbara and Phirosa Neterwala

 BMW Motorrad Boxer – Studio Chiang Mai

Tara Astamangala – Good Earth 

Untitled – David Yarrow

Ellie – Dileep Sharma

Prakriti – His Highness Maharaja Sawai Padmanabh Singh Ji Bahadur of Jaipur 

Hathi Raja – Seema Kohli

Bumpy – Christian Louboutin

Pithora – Lado Bai

The Lone Sentinel – Sumant Jayakrishnan

Devi – Rekha Rodwittiya

Me and My Million Voices – Veer Munshi

Mandana Elephant – Rakesh Kumar Memrot

White Elephant – Valay Shende

The Holy Pachyderm – Arzan Khambatta 

Aranya – Suhasini Kejriwal

Untitled – Geoff  Studios

 Jaipur – Abha Narain Lanbah

Marwar – Matang – His Highness Maharaja Gai Singh II of Jodhpur Marwar 

Frendlee – Surbhi Modi

Rukmini – Vinita Chaitanya 

Holi in the Pink City – Amrapali

The Sundarbans – Sabyasachi Art Foundation

Manek – His Highness Maharaja Sawai Padmanabh Singh Ji Bahadur of Jaipur and Samir Kasliwal.

The Gem Palace, Jaipur.

Krishna – Pranab Das

My Sacred Elephant – Kavita Singh

Bar Palladio Elephant – Marie-Anne Oudejans

Sky – Gaurav Gupta 

Rajasthani Blues – Alexis Barrell for the Bamfords

The Chakra Baby – Mazez Singh & Mehr Ramphal in collaboration with Six Inch Technology

Champa – Chittrovanu Mazumdar

Abhayam Gaja – Sanjay Puri

Eli – Miljan Suknovic

Ridesh – Gayatri Sekhri

Unforgettable – Barbara Bilotta

Akshay – JCB

Derangement – Vibha Galhotra 

Van Vaibhav – Good Earth 

Within – Arunkumar H G

Prakiti – Manish Malhotra 

Chandrika – Amrapli Tribe

Love wild, Love Free by Manish Arora

Letters from India – Hanif Kureshi

Mandelbrot – Alexis Myre

Rani – Brinda Miller

Continuous Path – Fukima Toda

Behemoth – Tushar Jaag 

Arianna – Elsie Nanji & Ayesha Broacha

Hari Ali – Gunjan Gupta

Zastava – Aradhana Seth

Gopi – Kalyan Joshi