OLD Victorian Jim Edwards did much to establish the tourism industry in Nepal.

But co-founding the annual World Elephant Polo Championships is perhaps what he will be most remembered for.

Albert Victor James Edwards died from a stroke on 24 March aged 73. Born in Hampshire on 24 November 1935, he moved to Jersey when he was a boy. He attended Victoria College and represented the Island at badminton.

After school, he worked as a butcher’s delivery boy and next as a messenger for the States before doing his national service with the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment.

In 1961 he went travelling and three years later started Nepal’s first wildlife tourism company, Nepal Wildlife Adventures. In the 1970s he helped develop a holiday resort, Tiger Tops, in the Chitwan reserve that attracted high-profile guests such as the Duke of Edinburgh, Hilary Clinton and Mick Jagger.

In 1982 he met Scottish polo player and former Olympic tobogganist James Manclark and the pair devised rules for a game they thought would expand Mr Edwards’s tourist business – elephant polo.

They set up the World Elephant Polo Association at Tiger Tops where they held the championships every December. It attracted celebrity riders and spectators from all over the world.

Mr Edwards is survived by three sons and a daughter.

Picture: Jim Edwards alongside one of his polo elephants