Post from Tim:
Michelle and I sat on the back of the elephant with two other passengers. The four of us were crammed uncomfortably on top of a square railed platform with our backs to each other and our legs hanging off the corners like the four points of a compass. The driver sat along the elephant's neck. He steered its leathery ears with his bare feet and we lumbered down the dirt road to the Royal Chitwan National Park.
The park entrance is quite far from the elephant camp, so we spent the first hour bouncing through the villages and forests nearby. Quiet village life went on around us - a group of basket-wielding women in hot red and pick saris laughed and socialized on the way to the fields. An old man cast his fishing net across the knee-deep water of a meandering stream. A young woman made breakfast on the adobe hearth outside her mud and thatched wood home. Close to the park entrance, herds of water buffalo grazed in a green pasture. We tiptoed through it on a multi-ton elephant and although I was dying to take photos of the people, I couldn't bring myself to do it from the back of an elephant. It would have had too much of a "look mommy, natives!" feel to it, don't you think?
Everything changed once we entered the fringe of the park. The foliage deepened, the bird life hummed around us, and we spotted a rhino after only five minutes. To our surprise, the elephant driver bounced us to within a foot of the mud puddle the two-ton animal wallowed in. The rhino barely lifted his head to look at us before dropping it back into the mud apathetically.
He was built to fight, like a prehistoric tank. Thick wrinkled body armor protected him from head to toe and even his tail fit neatly into a protective fold that kept it free from danger. I could picture him fighting off anything from a Jurassic Park movie.
Seeing a rhino on an elephant was light years away from yesterday's experience on foot. We didn't need to worry about climbing trees, for one thing. But even more amazing is that the animals in the park seemed oblivious to our presence. We were invisible to everything, like the two sleeping sabar deer we spotted. If they had spotted us on foot, I would have only seen their rear ends running away. But today, they simply looked up at us a few feet nearby and went back to sleep.
After we realized that we were safe up high on our elephant, we began to talk freely. The rhino's diamond shaped ears perked up with catlike twitches, but his eyes told him that the elephant in front was too large to charge. He looked up at us only occasionally and pretended we weren't there.
Shortly after we moved along, a brilliant blue peacock sailed from tree to tree above our heads. We passed rhesus macaque monkeys on the ground, cuckoos calling their own names, and wild chickens scuttling in the underbrush. But I really wanted to see another rhino and was happy to see not one, but two munching on grass in a clump of trees. Again, we stepped in close and watched freely as they ate.
Five minutes after leaving this pair, we crested a small hill and almost - literally - ran into a rhino on the other side. The driver looked as startled as us.
When it was time to leave, we ambled back to town alongside another group on an elephant. The drivers joked and knew each other well and egged on by us, soon started racing each other down the dirt streets through the village. Racing clearly wasn't a common occurrence here, because the same villagers who didn't look up this morning now shook with laughter as we passed.
Our elephant deftly lumbered into the lead, but the opposition was clearly faster. So our driver zigzagged us across the road like a racecar driver guarding his lead. But our lead proved hard to hold and the challenger soon raced ahead of us. Happily, we stole back to the front when the other driver stopped paying attention.
It has to be said that racing an elephant is really uncomfortable. It is like racing in a car with wood seats and egg shaped wheels - you just bounce in all directions. But in the end, we arrived to the finish line first and were rewarded by being the first group to hop off and soothe our aching butts.
The park entrance is quite far from the elephant camp, so we spent the first hour bouncing through the villages and forests nearby. Quiet village life went on around us - a group of basket-wielding women in hot red and pick saris laughed and socialized on the way to the fields. An old man cast his fishing net across the knee-deep water of a meandering stream. A young woman made breakfast on the adobe hearth outside her mud and thatched wood home. Close to the park entrance, herds of water buffalo grazed in a green pasture. We tiptoed through it on a multi-ton elephant and although I was dying to take photos of the people, I couldn't bring myself to do it from the back of an elephant. It would have had too much of a "look mommy, natives!" feel to it, don't you think?
Everything changed once we entered the fringe of the park. The foliage deepened, the bird life hummed around us, and we spotted a rhino after only five minutes. To our surprise, the elephant driver bounced us to within a foot of the mud puddle the two-ton animal wallowed in. The rhino barely lifted his head to look at us before dropping it back into the mud apathetically.
He was built to fight, like a prehistoric tank. Thick wrinkled body armor protected him from head to toe and even his tail fit neatly into a protective fold that kept it free from danger. I could picture him fighting off anything from a Jurassic Park movie.
Seeing a rhino on an elephant was light years away from yesterday's experience on foot. We didn't need to worry about climbing trees, for one thing. But even more amazing is that the animals in the park seemed oblivious to our presence. We were invisible to everything, like the two sleeping sabar deer we spotted. If they had spotted us on foot, I would have only seen their rear ends running away. But today, they simply looked up at us a few feet nearby and went back to sleep.
After we realized that we were safe up high on our elephant, we began to talk freely. The rhino's diamond shaped ears perked up with catlike twitches, but his eyes told him that the elephant in front was too large to charge. He looked up at us only occasionally and pretended we weren't there.
Shortly after we moved along, a brilliant blue peacock sailed from tree to tree above our heads. We passed rhesus macaque monkeys on the ground, cuckoos calling their own names, and wild chickens scuttling in the underbrush. But I really wanted to see another rhino and was happy to see not one, but two munching on grass in a clump of trees. Again, we stepped in close and watched freely as they ate.
Five minutes after leaving this pair, we crested a small hill and almost - literally - ran into a rhino on the other side. The driver looked as startled as us.
When it was time to leave, we ambled back to town alongside another group on an elephant. The drivers joked and knew each other well and egged on by us, soon started racing each other down the dirt streets through the village. Racing clearly wasn't a common occurrence here, because the same villagers who didn't look up this morning now shook with laughter as we passed.
Our elephant deftly lumbered into the lead, but the opposition was clearly faster. So our driver zigzagged us across the road like a racecar driver guarding his lead. But our lead proved hard to hold and the challenger soon raced ahead of us. Happily, we stole back to the front when the other driver stopped paying attention.
It has to be said that racing an elephant is really uncomfortable. It is like racing in a car with wood seats and egg shaped wheels - you just bounce in all directions. But in the end, we arrived to the finish line first and were rewarded by being the first group to hop off and soothe our aching butts.
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