It's a mini-mammoth! Starts out only large! (Might only stay large too.) And there are demons out there. It might not exactly survive for long! ^^;;
Its fairly appropriate for the region. He can mitigate the size a little with potions of reduce animal.
Getting the Mammoth into town might be difficult (I can't imagine Kenabres is going to be too welcoming to someone riding a small hairy elephant into their city - but that's up to you as the DM). The majority of the first section of the first book is in a caverns system - which involves bypassing chasms, climbing up ladders, tight squeezes, etc.
You might rule that the Mammoth can -be- down there using the rules for Squeezing in certain places (there're some caverns big enough for him to be fine), but there are definitely countless places in the first section of the book where a mammoth would be entirely unpractical without making constant use of magic to shrink it.
They swear mounts and larger companions will have a chance to shine in Book 2, so it might not be too bad - but he'll definitely either want to get extremely creative through most of Book 1 or just leave the mammoth outside the city entirely.
Well reduce animal is only a lvl 2 spell and lasts hours per level. Hrmm... its like it was dezigned for this sort of thing.
What class would this player be playing?
There's still 30'-60' sheer walls to be scaled (it's going to take some serious ropework to get that mammoth anywhere), and the issue of time. If your PCs have bad luck, they very well may get hit with some nasty status effects early in the AP, and that can turn what should be a 1-2 day trip into something that could potentially take half a week.
Honestly, I'd say having them leave the animal companion outside of the city is the best solution (because they're going to need potentially over 1000 GP in Reduce Animal oils to get through the first part). They can always make a "quick trip out" into the countryside halfway through Book 1 to retrieve it. By that point, nobody in Kenabres is going to give much of a hoot if they see an elephant in the streets - so long as it's a friendly elephant. The time when they're running errands for the their three NPC buddies in Act II is a good time to do that.
Again, potions. Spider climb and walk that mammoth up the wall. Admittedly you might have to spend some time on the your feet stick to walls thing.
And what the hell is wrong with the Cavalier not having his damn horse for the first part of the adventure? You don't see Adrian whining about not having his horsie. No, he's too busy polishing his armor to whine! ;)
Mojorat does have some good points. I've just been operating under the assumption that the AP will be started at level 1 "as intended". Those work arounds do work, they're just way too expensive for a level 1 to make use of.
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Well I asked this in the "Ask James Jacobs" thread:
I think it is workable. There is a spell called Carry Companion in Knights of the Inner Sea that turns your mount into a small figurine, just give your player a few potions or a wand of this spell and you should be fine.
Note that he'd be level 10 when taking his first level in Mammoth rider, so it would be somewhere in book 3.
Note that an Elephant, Mastadon animal companion/mount ("mammoths are a mastodon variant") is covered in the Bestiary:
"Starting Statistics: Size Medium...
7th-Level Advancement: Size Large..."