Elephants

Elephants enter the journey as more than a convenient substitute for a missing train: Kiouni’s strength makes an otherwise unfinished route passable, while his gentleness unsettles the idea that a war-trained animal is simply a weapon or machine. The episode places human urgency alongside the animal’s body and temperament, showing both the practical value assigned to him and the care that briefly answers that value.

Identity and Training

In India, Kiouni is an elephant kept by an Indian owner near Kholby. The owner has raised him for war rather than as a beast of burden, and the animal is only partly domesticated. His training has included being irritated and fed sugar and butter every three months, a method used to cultivate ferocity in elephants prepared for battle. Yet that process has not gone far enough to erase Kiouni’s natural gentleness. The contrast is central to his portrayal: his potential violence is something humans try to produce, not the temperament the narrative finds already dominant in him.

The account also places Kiouni within the scarcity and economics of elephant keeping. Elephants are described as expensive and increasingly scarce in India; domesticated males are especially sought after, including for circus performances. Kiouni is valuable not merely because he is large, but because he is a male animal capable of sustained travel and has received some training, while still retaining a disposition that makes him usable as a mount.

The Railway Gap and the Bargain

Kiouni becomes necessary because the railway journey fails at Kholby. The train stops there: the line is not finished, and roughly fifty miles remain between Kholby and Allahabad before the railway begins again. Although newspapers had announced the railway’s opening throughout, the travelers meet a physical gap in the promised network. With no train to carry them across it, Passepartout finds Kiouni nearby and suggests him as a means of conveyance. Phileas Fogg accepts the proposal without hesitation.

The owner, however, initially refuses to hire the elephant. Fogg raises his offer from ten pounds an hour to twenty and then forty, but each is rejected. The price is extraordinary even before the negotiation: if the trip took fifteen hours, the owner could earn six hundred pounds. Passepartout reacts eagerly to the rising sums, while the owner remains unmoved. The exchange makes the animal’s value tangible, but it also shows that money cannot automatically command access to him. Fogg must eventually secure the elephant and a young, skilled driver, whose services he rewards generously.

The Journey on Kiouni

The elephant is equipped with a saddle-cloth and two howdahs, one attached at each flank. Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty sit in the howdahs, while Passepartout rides astride the cloth between them; the driver sits on Kiouni’s neck. Provisions are bought at Kholby, and the party sets out at nine o’clock through dense palm forest, following the shortest route. Fogg also offers to carry Sir Francis to Allahabad, and the additional passenger accepts. The scene turns an infrastructure failure into an improvised, carefully arranged crossing: the travelers’ progress depends on Kiouni’s endurance, the driver’s skill, and the animal’s willingness to bear the unusual load.

Kiouni’s strength is practical, but the narrative gives him a distinct physical presence. After the rescue of Aouda, Passepartout calls him brave and faithful, feeds him several lumps of sugar, and approaches him affectionately. Kiouni grunts with apparent satisfaction, wraps his trunk around Passepartout’s waist, and lifts him as high as his own head. Passepartout is not alarmed; he caresses the elephant, who gently places him back on the ground. The gesture briefly reverses the usual relation between rider and mount: the man is raised and handled by the animal, whose power is evident precisely because he exercises it gently.

The Rescue and Its Aftermath

Before the journey across the gap, the travelers discover that Aouda is to be sacrificed at dawn. With twelve hours still available, Fogg decides to spend that time trying to save her. The decision interrupts the onward journey that Kiouni was meant to make possible: the elephant and his driver are part of the transport plan, but Fogg puts the endangered woman’s life ahead of keeping to that plan. After the rescue, Fogg tells the guide to take Kiouni and says he will remain the guide’s debtor. This transfer gives the animal a place in the aftermath as well as in the journey, while Passepartout’s farewell is expressed through sugar and touch rather than through any claim of ownership.

The rescued Aouda is carried onward with Fogg, Sir Francis, and Passepartout in a carriage toward Benares; the account does not describe Kiouni making that next leg. His service belongs to the difficult passage across the railway gap and to the travelers’ encounter with the rescue crisis, rather than to every stage of their onward route.

Narrative Significance

Kiouni’s episode exposes the material limits behind the novel’s timetable. A railway advertised as complete is in fact interrupted by fifty miles of unfinished track, and a wealthy traveler has to negotiate an alternative with an owner who can refuse even very large offers. The elephant makes movement possible where the modern system cannot, but the passage does not reduce him wholly to a vehicle. His war-oriented training, natural gentleness, and deliberate handling of Passepartout remain distinct features of his portrayal.

That combination gives the episode its tension. Kiouni is valued for strength and speed, and the travelers sit on equipment fitted to his body; at the same time, Passepartout’s kindness and the elephant’s gentle response make their contact more than a transaction. The narrative’s emphasis stays close to the humans’ route and emergency, but the animal’s brief act of lifting and safely lowering Passepartout gives him a memorable presence within that human-centered account.