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So how do you look for rhinos?
On an elephant, which masks your smell. And is hell of a lot
safer... |
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Rhinos are massive, but on an
elephant you lost that feeling of mass. Still, they look like
giant steel pigs. |
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A walk in
the jungle with the others staying there, led by a park naturalist.
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The grass was very
high, the ground was very damp, no rhinos could be seen. |
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My half bungalow (on the left). No
electricity to island, so quiet at night. |
View from my porch. |
Inside. |
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Morning over the Narayani River |
Banyan Tree - these
grow in large circles |
Leech - you don't feel them and
they're very tough to shake off, impossible if they've begun feeding |
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Elephant washing on day 2 - their hairs are very
bristly. They are so massive, but seem fragile too, with many
marks on their slightly rubbery skin. They drink 50 gallons of
water a day and eat about 500 pounds. Their crap looks like a
mound of yellow straw cannonballs, and they piss for about two minutes.
They are phenomenally strong - the mahouts would occasionally direct
them to pull down big vines or break and remove big tree parts from the
trails. |
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Others staying at Island Jungle
Adventures - two Finnish guys, four Australians, one UK |
<My foot in an elephant
footprint. |
Morning walk - indecision on
which way to go - we saw many footprints, giant millipedes... |
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Time to leave the island. |
We travelled in a land rover-type vehicle.
People live right by the park borders, and as soon as we got out of the
Park proper, we ran into these packs of kids that would block the
vehicles from passing until they were paid. Here, the driver is
trying to get them to disperse, but we ended up paying out 5Rs notes to
the more determined ones ($0.07). |
After getting through one, we'd run into another
one, then another one. But the driver didn't pay if he could
intimidate them, and we paid about 25Rs total. |
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I had had enough of bus rides.
It was 6+ hours back by bus, versus 15 minutes (Yes, 15 minutes) of
flying time to get back to Kathmandu. I flew out of the small
airport on the left on Buddha Air. It was one of the smarter
decisions I made. |
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