After breakfast there was a walk to the river. I regret to say that I am a little vague as to which river. It was certainly either the Narayani or Rapti or Reu, or perhaps one of the many tributaries to the Narayani Rapti river system.
The notes say "dodgy, misty canoe ride (Marshmugger?)". Says Wikipedia: "The name "mugger" is a corruption of the Hindi/Urdu word magar which means "water monster" in the Hindi/Urdu language. This is in turn derived from "makara", the Sanskrit word for crocodile." These rivers contained crocodiles.
Check out the pictures. The canoe trip was not an exclusively touristic thing. The only way across the river was on one of these long hollowed out tree trunks. If there is the slightest chance of meeting a crocodile, you have to wonder why the canoes are so overcrowded and so very low in the water.
The risk of being eaten alive by a mugger crocodile is actually nil because if I am correct crocodiles don't eat their kills alive, they just drown their victims and then let them rot for a bit before eating them. All the same, standing up holding a bicycle would certainly cut down your chances of being able to escape a water monster's attack.
The point of the canoe trip was so that we could take a jungle walk on the other bank. The wildlife in the Chitwan National Park is fantastic, if you get lucky enough to see it.
My notes say we encountered three Rhinoceroses, one of which was invisible and thus much more scary than the other two. I remember we were told that should one of them decide to charge we should run off in a zig zag pattern and throw something behind us. Rhinos are notoriously short sighted and can be spooked by anything. I'm sure that someone told me that Rhinos have actually charged at a tree stumps as if the trunks just standing there had threatened the Rhinos. They are like an extremely dangerous Mr Magoo with a "What the f**k are you looking at?" Biffa Bacon mentality.
They do however have a keen sense of smell, hence the advice about the best method for running away from them. I have a vague memory of Al Pacino in the film Serpico talking about running "serpentine" - it was the same advice.
We were also told to watch out for sloth bears. Apparently quite contrary to the expectation their name suggests they are no slouches, they can gallop faster than a human being can run and when cornered will stand up to Tigers that occasionally prey on them while they snuffle in ant hills.
The closest encounter we had with sloth bear related danger on this walk was the risk of treading in its shit. Some sloth bear shit was drawn to our attention. This indicated two things: first, there were sloth bears in the vicinity or there had been recently; and second, that bears do in fact shit in the woods. There it was. Sloth bear shit in the woods. Our guides could have planted it there, I suppose. On the other hand it could have been any old shit, not sloth bear shit at all. We might have been told it was sloth bear shit to heighten the sense of being in an environment inhabited by dangerous wild animals. How can you know?
