The elephant in the corridor. It's like the elephant in the room, only different. This thought took me in rather unexpected directions.

It had me formally opening a village in Kerala; it had me hearing what it was like to be in a house while it was being destroyed by an elephant; it had me gazing over a vast expanse of green Eden full of elephants and elephants and elephants: a place where elephants may safely graze.

And I wanted to save them all, every one, and so we shall, if we can raise a few quid. It works out at £10 million to safeguard India's elephants for the foreseeable future. That's £500 per elephant: as good a bargain as the Earth has been offered since the time of destruction began.

India is vast but its peoples are vaster - 1.2 billion and growing. A drive out from Delhi: will Delhi ever stop? Will the buzzing streets of motorbikes, three people on each, gorgeously decorated lorries and spluttering auto-rickshaws ever end? All these people, they need land and they need more land and they ain't making it any more.

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Six hours from Delhi, and with immense suddenness, a new land, a new country. A country of slopes and trees and a tumultuous river: Mowgli might walk out of it at any second and there, a small patch of grey against a great backdrop of green, a lone bull elephant. It was a sudden revelation of the smallness of elephants and the immensity of the land they need.

He was peacefully filling himself with a salad of leaves and twigs, because for an elephant, eating is more or less a full-time job. Tearing great strips of the countryside and trunking them away. Eternal calm: even for the most secular, there is a hint of religious experience in such perfection. But there was not much room to get past him.

So we approached with caution in our vehicle, and of course, he gave us the charge, suddenly frightfully big after all, not terribly calm either, and the moment lost its Edenic aspect as we stopped with distressing suddenness to attempt - and I think set - a world record for backwards driving. People and elephants together - it's never an easy mixture. We both want the same thing. Space.

This was Corbett National Park, an island of wild entirely surrounded by tame. An island of elephants entirely surrounded by people. From the inside, like the Tardis, the park is immense. Once inside, you can't believe that the whole world is not like this - green canopy occasionally flashing with scarlet minivet or the iridescence of bee-eaters, langurs - monkeys of immense elegance - languidly eating leaves, a butterfly striped like a humbug. You can't believe that such a world would ever end or that anyone would ever want it to.

But it does. And it doesn't do so gradually, it does so with distressing suddenness. With India's elephants there are no grey areas. You're either in the jungle and safe, or you're outside the jungle and the clash with people is immediate and horrible.

“They haven't been here for two weeks,” Sharad Kumar said. He has farmed land between Corbett National Park and Ramnagar Forest Reserve for 18 years, or all his life. Elephants on either side, him and his community in between. He showed me a field of nearly ripe corn, a few cattle. It is a neat, small-scale operation, one full of diligence and optimism. When the elephants come, locals light torches and make a din and harry the elephants off.

“A tiger killed my cow two days back,” Kumar added. That's about £100, a lot of money. The jungle is too close but what else can he do? Where else can he go? Elephants have become enemies, a sad thing in a Hindu country. To make an enemy of God is not a thing you take lightly. But elephants have been poisoned in pure revenge. One poisoner justified his action by painting on the carcass, in exquisite Assamese calligraphy, the name Osama bin Laden. The elephant: from God to Devil inside a generation.

The elephants mostly stay inside the jungle, but they occasionally spill out. Then, a field of corn or a plantation of bananas makes an irresistible opportunity. So they must be driven back again, and sometimes people are killed. It's not a good situation for the people.

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