‘He had been used for logging on the Andaman Islands. When I found him, he was 60, living in retirement – and loving his swims’

I lived at sea for 10 years. I co-owned and ran a global kiteboarding expedition business. We’d sail around the world on a 60-foot catamaran, following the trade winds, kiteboarding, surfing and paragliding in remote locations. One night, I watched a Hollywood movie called The Fall, which had a section where an elephant was swimming in tropical blue water. I didn’t know if it was real or a fake Hollywood thing. But I thought: “Man, if that does exist, I’d love to photograph it.”

I searched the internet and found the elephant from the film was living in the Andaman Islands, an Indian territory in the Bay of Bengal. When we sailed into the capital, Port Blair, a few months later in 2010, I decided to hop off and try to find this elephant. I found Rajan on Havelock (now Swaraj) Island and spent two weeks with him, learning about his incredible story.