Our last stop in Nepal was a three-day stay in Chitwan National Park, near the Indian border. The 932 square kilometer park is home to a variety of species, including one-horned rhinos, deer, monkeys, leopards, elephants, and even Bengal tigers. After our long stay in Kathmandu we were excited to get back into nature, so we opted to “splurge” for a resort inside the park whose all-inclusiveness included not just our meals but guided elephant safaris, jungle walks, jeep tours, and a canoe trip through the park.
On jungle safaris we got a cursory safety lesson on how to react if we ran across any of the more dangerous of the jungle’s species, which left Nora spending a good deal of her walks looking for easy trees to climb in the case of a rhino stampede. Unluckily (or luckily, depending on how you look at it), we didn’t see any leopards, tigers, or bears. We were, however, fortunate to have several close encounters with rhinos. The first involved us chasing a mother rhino and her calf through thick jungle on elephants, trampling and felling sizable trees as we went. We were happy to be riding elephants for this encounter, as the mother rhino was quite agitated at being cornered by three elephants. For our other memorable encounter, we weren’t lucky enough to be riding elephants. Midway through our final jungle walk we ran across a sizable rhino bathing in the river. It was big, much larger than the mother and calf we’d seen earlier, and almost as close – only about 100 feet away. Once aware of our presence, it swam surprisingly quickly to the far shore where it stood and stared at us for a long time before deciding to move on. The speed and dexterity with which it moved through the water and on to the shore made our hearts beat a little faster – what a relief it was running away from us and not toward us!
Click on the photo below to view our Chitwan photo album.
On jungle safaris we got a cursory safety lesson on how to react if we ran across any of the more dangerous of the jungle’s species, which left Nora spending a good deal of her walks looking for easy trees to climb in the case of a rhino stampede. Unluckily (or luckily, depending on how you look at it), we didn’t see any leopards, tigers, or bears. We were, however, fortunate to have several close encounters with rhinos. The first involved us chasing a mother rhino and her calf through thick jungle on elephants, trampling and felling sizable trees as we went. We were happy to be riding elephants for this encounter, as the mother rhino was quite agitated at being cornered by three elephants. For our other memorable encounter, we weren’t lucky enough to be riding elephants. Midway through our final jungle walk we ran across a sizable rhino bathing in the river. It was big, much larger than the mother and calf we’d seen earlier, and almost as close – only about 100 feet away. Once aware of our presence, it swam surprisingly quickly to the far shore where it stood and stared at us for a long time before deciding to move on. The speed and dexterity with which it moved through the water and on to the shore made our hearts beat a little faster – what a relief it was running away from us and not toward us!
Click on the photo below to view our Chitwan photo album.
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