It was as Gemma Jones was climbing on to the elephant, over its head and on to its back, that she began to have misgivings. The trek through the hillside jungle in north Thailand, near Chiang Mai, was highly rated by other travellers. Jones had been expecting a ladder, perhaps even a saddle. Instead she found a wooden plank, lashed precariously with rope across the animal’s back. “I remember climbing on and thinking: ‘I don’t know about this,’” she says.
Jones, 45, is a clinical psychologist and yoga therapist based in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. Back then, in October 2002, she was 24 years old and days into what was meant to be a 15-month trip through south-east Asia, Australia and New Zealand with two friends.
