Mary Roach

describes opening up an artery, flushing the blood out with water, and pumping in alcohol. I've been to frat parties like that.

In India there’s a thing called an “awareness camp.” I first heard the term from a researcher at the Wildlife Institute of India who runs elephant and leopard awareness camps. I imagined a camp in the American sense, with bunk beds and marshmallows, and I tried to meld this in my head with large, dangerous animals. Naturally I wanted to go. As it turns out, an awareness camp is closer to a national awareness day. I’ve seen listings for dengue fever awareness camps, diabetes awareness camps, traffic safety awareness camps, and at least one Snoring and Sleep Apnea Awareness Camp, which sounds like our bedroom. They’re informational gatherings with the aim of making people aware of dangers they may not know much about or prefer not to think about and offering guidance in how best to avoid or survive them.

Every December that researcher, Dipanjan Naha, locks up his office in Dehradun, slaps a Government of India on duty placard on a hired four-wheel drive, and heads out on a sort of awareness camp road trip. This year his cousin Aritra is coming along as his assistant, and I’m in the car, too. We’re starting in North Bengal—confusingly, a region of West Bengal—where each year, wild elephants kill, on average, 47 people and injure another 164. Forty-seven people per year, in an area the size of Connecticut.