A wild elephant held up motorists after taking over a road in India.

The jumbo walked along the concrete trail while looking for food, preventing motorists from passing through Bandipur forest in Karnataka on June 21.

It held cars and motorcycles on the forest road for about five minutes before it returned to the woods and traffic returned to normal.

Amazed tourist Rudra Bas said: ‘We had an unexpected elephant encounter. We were supposed to return home after our vacation when we saw it.

‘The wild elephant looked so mighty and huge. The cars had to stop to avoid frightening it with loud sounds.'

Indian elephants usually spend up to 19 hours per day feeding and produce up to 220 pounds of dung. These droppings help disperse germinating seeds and act as a natural fertiliser for the soil.

An Asian elephant subspecies, the Indian elephant, is native to mainland Asia. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed the species as endangered since 1986 for its rapidly declining population. Between 1930 and 1940 alone, Asian elephant numbers in the wild fell by a whopping 50 per cent.