I DREAM OF INDIA

Palaces, peacocks, tigers, and jewels: few places have the power to bewitch children quite like Rajasthan, in northwestern India. Flora Stubbs takes her kids on a spring break like no other.

- Flora Stubbs

Were are the two main things I'm excited about in India," said Leo, our six-year-old. "Painting, and elephants."

Leo and his nine-year-old sister, Stella, are both into art, and in the weeks leading up to our spring break trip, my husband, Dave, and I had told them we'd be visiting a miniature painting studio in Rajasthan. But elephants-and specifically riding an elephant? No one is quite sure where that idea came from. Yet somehow, by the time we set off last March, there the elephants sat: kings of Leo's imagination, and top of his India to-do list.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that in 2023, putting elephants to work as tourist vehicles isn't seen as a great or even particularly acceptable thing to do, from an animal welfare perspective. So when, about five days into our trip, the four of us arrived at Amber Fort outside Jaipur to find that the sorry, chained-up herd that used to carry visitors up to the 16th-century palace on the hill was nowhere to be seen, I breathed a secret sigh of relief.