Its Twins

The Elephant Breeding ground had very welcome visit from the stork as one of the elephants had bared twins 2 weeks previously. We were excited to see the little tots. Our modus apparatus was via an elephant who was parked outside our cabin ready to take us on our morning safari. We boarded our elephant as you would do a small plane by means of a tall stair tower. Rid yourselves of any notion of a velvety Maharajah throne. Atop our elephant was a wooden box. Well, there was a slab of wood with a little banister around the edge which we had to climb in and sit back to back with our legs hanging out of each corner. We thought it was snug until we laboured into the next guest house and picked up another couple for our box. That made four of us back to back star like in the box and the Mahou (driver) on the elephants head. Five in total. Ridiculous.

Malachy knew after the first few steps it was going to be a ball breaker. He wasn’t disappointed. We ambled through forested national park, our eyes pealed in both anticipation and fright for a rare sighting of the elusive Bengal Tiger. But this isn’t the life of Pi, we were content with a wonderful meeting with the endangered Indian rhino- quite a treat. The Rhino looks like a prehistoric creature; a cross between a large armadillo and a small elephant. It’s skin looks like plates of leathered amour molded for his irregular body. Battle ready…except our Rhino seemed to have long lost his fight even in the process of five elephants with 25 people on board snapping and flashing, oohing and awing, he had no notion of charging or escaping from the loose circle we had surrounded him in. What he did was this: paused, glanced, ate and peed. Magnificent! Our safari was a success! We also saw some deer with huge Christmas antlers, an eagle, peacocks, a colourful kingfisher and walked into lots of cobwebs so there was definitely spiders too.

We dismounted 3 hours later and watched the elephant bathe in the river. We decided not to lend a hand with the scrubbing as many tourists we paying to do but had fun instead watching them fall off the elephants back into the muddy water and being showered by jets the elephants trunk provided- a power shower that a Nepalese guest house would envy.

Our Canoe river safari awaited us after lunch. Our Nepalese canoe was a low lying crocodile like boat that seemed to be carved from a single hollowed out trunk and once we sat into the flat bottom our sides were hardly floating an inch above water. We glided peacefully down river for an hour barely making an audible ripple not even disturbing the Siberian migrating ducks resting in the water. According to our guide our mission was to spot the 2 types of crocodile: the man-eating crocodile and a more peaceful death trap. Mission accomplished. We saw many of each of the ancient looking feared ones.

We trekked back through tall elephant grass (a favourite of the tiger) thus caution was had and we eventually wound up at the elephant breeding centre. Here we saw the new borns who were walking, talking, 2 foot tall mammals, trying to eat like their mother with amateur success. Not bad for 2 week olds and definitely the biggest babies we’ve ever seen. Incredibly cute! Wow! What an adventurous day.