Elephants, leeches and a rhino

Since I had a few days to kill before I was scheduled to leave for Tibet, I booked a trip to the Royal Chitwan National Park, which the oh-so-knowledgeable Lonely Planet bills as Nepal’s third biggest attraction (after trekking and the Kathmandu valley).  The park is a nature reserve which supposedly has tigers, leopards, rare Gangetic dolphins and the endangered one-horned Indian rhino.

I don’t remember hearing any mention of leopards while I was there.  I was also  told by an elephant trainer that the portion of the jungle we were in did not have any of the 150 tigers that live in the park.  And our guide told us that the Gangetic dolphins were all washed away when the rivers flooded a few years ago.

But I did ride an elephant.  And I saw one rhino.  And I encountered leeches for the first time (one of which left a nice dime-sized red splotch on my hip, thanks).

The highlight of the trip was playing in the river with the elephants.  This polite elephant was kind enough to give me a lift up so I could climb onto his back:

Then his trainer made him move around so that we all promptly fell off:

Everything was fun and games until we heard shouting and turned around to see two Nepali men searching frantically in the water for a tourist who hadn’t resurfaced after he took his turn falling off of the elephant into the river (Helpful Travel Tip #1:  if you can’t swim don’t go play in a river with elephants).  The elephant’s trainer worked to keep him under control as this would have been an inopportune time for the elephant to decide to sit down.  After about 20-30 seconds of standing in shock (which feels like a lot longer than it sounds), we were relieved to see a Nepali man bring up the Chinese tourist.  The lucky tourist then tipped the man that saved his life with some rupees and we all went about our merry way…

…I also met some baby elephants…

…and went for a ride through the jungle on an elephant…

….and chased the endangered one-horned Indian rhino while on an elephant (oh and that’s my foot).

While the trip started out awkward because the rest of the group  was composed entirely of couples (except for the family of four, of course), I discovered that one of the “couples” was actually an Italian girl and a German guy who were friends from interning at the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (which was interesting to me because I met its founder and Nobel Peace Price winner, Muhammad Yunus, when I saw him speak in Houston a couple of years ago…but that’s probably not interesting to you so I digress).

Up Next: Riding on top of buses and the six hour traffic jam