During the week of August 27, 2009, I spent a week in the French Savoy Alps, near the border with Italy. I joined the British Hannibal Expedition’s 50th anniversary of their march of a single elephant across the Alps in 1959, recreating the route used by the African General Hannibal in his march on Rome in the Second Punic War, in 218 BC.

    The 1959 expedition was done to test a possible route across the mountains, and to monitor the effects of Alpine altitudes on an elephant. The 2009 march was a commemoration of the 1959 expedition.

     Hannibal marched 40,000 soldiers and 37 elephants along this route. This time we were only 30 troops, and no elephant. It’s not easy to rent an elephant...