The notes say "LUNCH - smoke". I'm not entirely sure why smoking was significant unless it was. I suppose that I may have had a little of Bim's stuff left.
After that in much bigger capitals "ELEPHANT RIDE". Lunch had capital letters too so it must have been big. Elephants are big, in fact they are so big that they are difficult to photograph. They are also very peaceful and graceful.
Add elephants to the modes of transport on this trip. If I was high before I climbed up into the basket affair on one side of the elephant's back, sitting atop that majestic animal I was much higher. It was quite something. Once we had all mounted the giant beasts strolled into the forest where we saw monkeys and deer. The abiding memory that I have is of how smoothly the elephants seemed to move. They weren't in any hurry and seemed to be very careful about every step they took. They didn't crash through the undergrowth so much as tiptoe through it. I made a good tape recording of this elephant safari. The noise that the elephants didn't make was almost the point.
At one stage the "phanit", Nepali for "mahout" (which is not an English word, is it? "Driver" doesn't seem to express enough but that's what a "phanit" is) gave some instructions to our elephant and the elephant reached down and uprooted a small sapling with his trunk and handed/trunked it up to the phanit who trimmed it with a large knife before using the resultant stick to wallop the elephant on the head!. The noise was quite amazing and echoed all around the forest. I have no idea why the phanit did it nor why the elephant allowed him to. Elephants are reputedly quite intelligent, perhaps very intelligent. They are famous for not forgetting things. The phanit must have done this before. The elephant must have known what was coming. It didn't seem to phase him. He just went along with it. I suppose they are quite thick skinned.
On top of an elephant is probably the safest vantage point from which to observe the rhinoceros and somehow we were able to get relatively close to one. Despite the fact that I wanted to conserve my slide film I also wanted to get a good picture of a rhino so I took four. Three of them weren't too bad.
At ground level the elephant grass would have made it difficult to get a good shot. I'd like to say that this specimen seemed more content than the one I photographed at London Zoo but it also looked pretty grumpy despite being in its natural environment. The difference (apart from the fact that they are different kinds of rhino) is that the one in London seemed to have given up and was resigned to its concrete surroundings. This one had more attitude and I'm glad I was high up on an elephant.
After a full day in the great outdoors it was back to the Tiger Wildlife camp for dinner, another smoke, packing my rucksack and a shower before bed. This was my last night at the edge of the jungle.
