Rhino? What rhino?
Nepal has such diversity of landscape - those awe inspiring mountains, paddy fields, small and large farms, beautiful forests and the urban rush of Kathmandu. But also further south in the Kathmandu valley, the tropical jungle of Chitwan National Park.
It’s a helluva drive, seven dusty crazy hours of crazy traffic - many old and ornately decorated Indian trucks, buses full of patient dark faces, wild motor bike riders with babies and luggage and no helmets, almost constant hopeless road works and dust so thick the trees look like sand dunes.
I have had so many different experiences that I feel like I’ve been inside a washing machine on spin for weeks!
And today it was rhino hunting - all day trying to spot a rhino! First we went out at 6am in a jeep - it was fantastic - cool wind and dusty dawn - I get to sit in the front too since I’m an old lady !
But no rhinos - many other animals and birds but not a rhino anywhere! So after a few hours we went off home to sulk in our rooms (and eat an amazing lunch and lie by the pool).Then later we tried again.
This time, an hour or so down a crocodile-infested river in a ridiculously tiny flimsy dugout canoe with a German with a camera the size of a small plane around his neck who kept on rocking the boat. I was terrified - there were crocs everywhere. Just lying in wait- lazily popping their hideous snouts up out of the water, sniffing us in the air.
No luck again, so we tramped around in the jungle and sweaty heat for about two hours - still nothing.
Finally gave up and headed home. I had a bottle of terrible Nepali wine chilling in the fridge and was looking forward to it, despite it tasting like Fanta.
And then, as the dusty darkness drew in and we rattled along a bumpy track, we passed a wide open field where a whole bunch of raggedy kids were playing soccer in the dusk and the sharp-eyed guide spotted something. We pulled up short, piled out of the van, ran across the field, scaled a fence and lo - one big old rhino and half a dozen deer hanging out and eating grass.
So - twelve hours later we actually got the photo. The guide has many stories of locals gored to death but he looked fairly disinterested in such things to me (the rhino that is - not the guide).
Suffice to say, I’m exhausted and having a wine is required.
I love it here- surreal and the extremes I’ve experienced are head banging -beautiful kind people, primitive high mountains, hot filthy urban Kathmandu, rural Nepal, clean green maverick for carbon-neutral Bhutan and now jungle- rhinos and Nepalis being proud of their captive heavily chained elephants - a whole heap of Indians riding them and me feeling distinctly uncomfortable with that.
So much to think about- I can’t write any poems- my brain is full.
ADDENDUM
So the next day, my well-documented stubbornness came into play and I decided to try again. In the late afternoon I set off through the rampant Lantana and toi toi (I guess it’s called something else here) with three jeep loads of excitable Indians and a guide whose English seemed to consist of “ spotted deer” and “baby croc”!
As soon as we got to the jungle- there were rhino (for Africa). Mothers and babies swimming in the river, families picnicking in the grass and lone old boys wandering about eating grass.
Persistence pays I guess.
