Hello Nepal

We – Scott, myself, and the steerer – were sitting perched atop an elephant in Chitwan National Park in southern Nepal and, in my mind, I was composing a blog post about my disappointment with our National Park experiences in this part of the world. We has just finished a 7-hour walk through a miniscule fraction of grassland and forest in Chitwan and didn't have any significant sightings. Scott would argue over my definition of the word 'significant.' Sure, we saw tons of birds, including a rare Egyptian vulture and hornbills and kingfishers, crocodiles and gharials, red-spotted deer and sambars, monkeys, but we didn't see any sloth bears or tigers or rhinos. Not seeing a rhino was what disappointed me the most. We've seen them wild in Africa but were excited to see this Asian rhino, which looks as if it's wearing armour. I was thinking that this elephant safari wasn't shaping up to be any better than the walking safari when – finally – on the latter half of our supposed hour-and-a-half tour, we finally spotted a rhino! Scott saw it first. It looked like it was next to another one, and sure enough, my vision was correct – we had stumbled upon a mother and baby. They didn't seem to be bothered by an elephant walking closer and closer; they carried on eating. Scott and I were trying to capture the magnificent creatures through various camera angles when two more appeared. They had walked out of the forest into the clearer area to eat. After spending some time with these four, our elephant driver looked at his watch and steered the elephant away – our tour was coming to an end and he had to get us back. On our way out, another rhino appeared directly in our path. She even charged at us a bit – rhinos have terrible eyesight – not realizing right away that an elephant would kick her ass. Another rhino appeared by its side.

In total we saw eight rhinos in Chitwan National Park, which made every other National Park visit on this tour worth it. We never saw the elusive tiger, but I have to say, I'm alright with that. Maybe next time.