Mark Shand
Adventurer, Award Winning Travel Writer and Conservationist

Mark Shand has entertained audiences internationally with his unique storytelling style and tales of his great adventures. He is a Life Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Member of the Explorers Club for many years, alongside Sir David Attenborough and David Bellamy, a Vice-President of Flora & Fauna International, the oldest conservation society in the world. Mark has lectured widely at many prestigious venues, such as The Royal Geographical Society and the Hay-on- Wye and the Edinburgh Book Festivals and is a frequent guest on radio and television talk shows.

Mark has worked at Sotheby's in London, on cattle and sheep stations and opal mines in Australia, and in real estate in New York. At one time, he was a partner in a successful international business, selling Art Deco jewellery. But his greatest passion has always been to travel…

Mark has ridden through the Andes on horseback, completed the London-Sydney motor race, been shipwrecked in the western Pacific while attempting to sail around the world, and made countless expeditions to remote areas in South East Asia. One such expedition led to the publication of his first book, Skulduggery (with photographs by Don McCullin), the story of a search for the headhunting tribes in Irian Jaya, Indonesia.

Mark's passion for Asian elephants started when he fell in love with his elephant Tara, whom he still owns and visits regularly at her home in Kipling Camp in Madhya Pradesh. The stories of Mark's adventures with Tara are recounted in his best-selling book Travels on my Elephant, which earned him the British Book Awards Travel Writer of the Year Award in 1992. Both English hardback and paperback editions became number one bestsellers in the UK and remained on the list for 14 weeks. The book attained international acclaim with translation rights published and sold in USA, France, Italy, Germany, Holland and Japan and China.

In 1995, he wrote Queen of the Elephants, the account of a four-month elephant journey with Parbati Barua, one of India's greatest elephant experts and the only female mahout or elephant driver in the world. Both English hardback and paperback editions were bestsellers, with translation rights sold and published in many countries. The book was nominated for the 1996 Thomas Cook / Daily Telegraph Travel Book Award, and won the French literary award, Prix Litteraire 30 millions d'Amis 1996.

Through his books, lectures and documentary films, Mark has raised funds and awareness worldwide for the survival of the Asian Elephant. In 2002, he founded elephant family; the only charitable organization dedicated to all Asian Elephants.

Many of Mark's documentary films have been shot in India and several have featured Hollywood stars such as Goldie Hawn and Julia Roberts. Among the films are:

· Queen Of The Elephants written, presented and narrated by Mark Shand
· Jumbo Jamboree, produced by John Gau and filmed in India
· The Search For Shangri-La, co-presented, written and narrated by Mark Shand
· "In the Wild" The Elephants of India, with Goldie Hawn (on camera and consultant).
· India Diaries, a major six part series for National Geographic Television. 
  Written, co-presented and narrated by Mark Shand.
· Mark was the consultant and advisor on two other films from the " In the Wild" series:
· Orangutans with Julia Roberts
· Horsemen of Mongolia with Julia Roberts

Negotiations are currently well under way to adapt his award-winning book, Travels on my Elephant for a major feature movie.

Mark's latest book River Dog is published in paperback by Abacus in May 2003. River Dog chronicles Mark's attempt, accompanied by Baithi, his faithful Indian pi-dog, to become the first person to follow the entire length of the legendary Brahmaputra River, from its beginnings as a tiny glacial stream high on the desolate plateau of western Tibet, to its end in the Bay of Bengal, eighteen hundred miles and three countries later.

Mark divides his time between the UK, Italy and India. He lives in Rome with his wife, the former actress Clio Goldsmith and their daughter, Ayesha.

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