Elephant Breeding Center, Nepal

Incredibly cute!

They have the longest gestation period of any land animal, 22 months.

 Their caretakers make little nutritious food packets for the elephants which are useful treats during training.

Treated well, they can live into their 70's.

At about 5 years of age, they are separated from their mothers and their training begins.

Some of the young were not chained because they rarely wander far from their mothers.

It is difficult to watch the training process because you can see that the elephants are struck squarely on their heads with a fat stick if they misbehave.

The elephants are strong enough to drag a three ton tree, so it is important that the trainers have control over the elephants at all times.  Sometimes the elephants will unexpectedly lose their minds and become completely unmanageable.  After the elephant breeding center, we walked 2 miles into town to see if there was a cybercafe so that we could let people know that we might have some difficulties returning during the strike.  Halfway to town we saw roughly 20 people standing in the street keeping their eyes on a large elephant from a distance.  We continued to walk confidently toward the crowd and the elephant.  Fortunately, one man stopped us.  "The elephant is mad.  He has already killed two men.  We are waiting for the mahout to come and get him."  We thanked the man and quickly retreated.

The Great Elephant Flip-Flop Rescue!

In January, when I normally go to Nepal, it is relatively cold and there are few tourists in Nepal.  This means that down in the jungle my guests and I are treated to private elephant rides, boat rides, and jungle walks.  In March it was a vastly different experience.  Tourists were all around us and a herd of elephants followed us into the jungle.

Loading up with tourists and preparing to depart.

I did spend some time worrying about how tightly the crate was cinched.

The mahout steers with his feet.

Some of the elephants were very nervous about crossing the river.  They were up to their shoulders in water, with five people on their backs.
We lurched forward and backward when the elephant slipped on the mud as it climbed out of the river and up the opposite bank into the jungle.

We looked all over for the rhino.

Do you think the rhino might have heard us and moved out of our way?

A man sharing the elephant with us lost his flip-flop shoe. 

The mahout behind us was able to direct his elephant to find the man's flip-flop in the muddy stream and return it to him.  You can see it in his hand.  Everyone was astounded.  The flip-flop was covered in mud and sloshing around in muddy water.

We did see a lot of deer.

It is amazing that on an elephant you can come right up on a deer even though you could never do that walking.

If you have a little extra time and money, you can arrange to camp over night in this building in the jungle.

Thank you for the excellent ride.  Here are some bananas.  Maybe we will catch up with the rhinos next time.

Hunting for Rhino

I have been to the jungle a few times now and have seen rhinos up close and wild elephants, crocodiles, several kinds of monkeys and at least 50 different types of  birds.  Until this trip I had no photos from the jungle at all.  The first time I traveled to Nepal my camera broke before I got to the jungle.  On my second trip to the jungle, both my father and I ate something that gave us diarrhea.  My dad cleared his system just before we got on the bus back to Kathmandu, but I didn't know I was going to have a problem until we were about an hour up hill.  I wasn't exactly sure how to stop the bus, but I knew I had to do something urgently.  So I walked up to the front of the bus and told the bus driver that he must stop because I was having 'female troubles.'  I thought that might keep the situation discreet.  The driver swiftly pulled over to the left and I exited into the tall grass on the side of a very steep cliff.  Unwisely, I had chosen to wear bib overalls that day, that meant that I would have to basically undress from my shoulders to my knees with a bus load of people above me to my rear.  In order to hide myself a completely as possible,  I scooted as far to the edge of the cliff as I could safely manage so that when I unbuckled my bib and let it drop forward all of the rolls of film that my father shot of the jungle went bouncing out of my pocket and careened over the edge of the cliff.  It was very sad... we had some great shots of mother and baby rhinos that were standing only 20 feet from us while we rode the back of an elephant.  Adding to my embarrassment, several other passengers exited the bus and relieved themselves in the grass as well.  Then when we all returned to the bus my father told me that the bus driver had stood up when I left the bus and announced to everyone that I was having female troubles.  So much for trying to be discreet. 

The time that I went to the jungle with my uncle, I didn't have a camera, so this time I was determined to get some good pictures of rhinos for my boys!

Heading up from the river past the tall grass and into the jungle.

Rhino poop, we are getting closer.

We spotted a rhino in the distance lying on its side.  It was too far away to get a good picture for you.

We were a bit on edge knowing that if a rhino smelled us our only recourse was to climb a tree.

We followed elephant tracks to the river hoping to see either wild elephants or bathing rhinos.

There were only birds.

On the way back to the jungle we found the shed skin of a cobra but luckily we didn't run into its former owner.

We walked for about two hours, but I didn't find a good rhino shot for the boys.

We took a nap when we returned to the lodge.

In a few hours we went out searching for rhino again, this time on the back of an elephant. To be continued...

 

 

Honesty and Poverty

I had to create this image from some toys in my dining room because I have lost all of the pictures that I have ever taken in the jungle. (That's another story.)

My uncle stroked the elephant and praised it like he would his dogs. He had even come prepared with a few fruity snacks that the little elephant took politely with the tip of its trunk and deposited into its mouth. Elephants look so sad and wise at the same time. I thought I saw a curious appreciation for my uncle's kindness in its long lashed eye.

They had not yet finished building the platform stairs so that we could easily climb into the crate saddled on the elephant's back, so the Mahout commanded the elephant to lie on its belly and cross its hind legs. My uncle, already in his late 60's, climbed up, stepping first on the back of one of the elephant's legs, then the other, and then onto the tail which the Mahout gripped tightly next to the elephants back side to form another step. He grabbed the edge of the crate with one hand and hoisted his body up onto the elephant's back and climbed into the crate. My uncle's legs dangled down over the right front shoulder of the elephant. I climbed up next, and seated myself in the opposite corner of the crate looking to the rear of the elephant. The Mahout nimbly scampered up the front leg of the elephant and swung his legs around the elephant's neck placing his bare feet gently behind its ears so that he could steer the elephant.

The elephant walked slowly down the road and over a bridge to a small village that was surrounded by a fence of prickly cactus. The cactus had been planted to keep the rhinos out, but I was told that a few people had to stay up all night to watch for rogue animals all the same. The village was full of open air shacks with few walls. You could see every detail of the inhabitants' lives. They seemed just as curious about us as we were about them and would smile and press their hands together in greeting as we passed. Some of the children ran along side of the elephant and waved to us. Village cows, chickens, goats and pigs scattered in front of our parade. But the children stayed back as the elephant stepped into the low lying mists of the jungle.

I had ridden on elephants before that were much larger than this one. Usually, the ride was smooth, graceful, and remarkably quiet. I was surprised at the brutal lumpiness of this ride. We lurched forward and back relentlessly with our ribs banging into the wooden bars on the crate. After a while, I tucked my coat down around my ribs to provide some extra padding. Painful as it was, it was still an exhilarating ride through the jungle. There are animals that you can see from an elephant's back that you usually do not see while walking through the jungle. The deer, wild boar, peacocks, monkeys and rhinos all stay around a little longer when an elephant is coming down the path compared to a group of noisy people tramping through. Sitting quietly on the elephant's back, we were able to stand only a few feet from a wild elephant, her baby and a few rhinos.

For about 2 hours we rode up and down jungle paths and created a few of our own paths in grass that was as tall as the elephant's eyes as we looked for a tiger. We saw tiger tracks, but never found a tiger. Few people do. Finally, we returned to our camp. I started searching my coat pockets for my wallet so that I could give the Mahout a tip. As I patted about my pockets, a deep sick feeling welled up in my belly and a cold sweat started to break out on my brow. The wallet was gone. I had done something I never do, I put the wallet with my driver's license, credit cards and all of my cash into my coat pocket. Normally, I have hidden zippered pockets and extra wallets so that I don't lose everything at once. I did still have back up cards and a passport tucked away in a safe place, but there are many places in Nepal where credit cards are useless, so one must carry small bills in Nepalese Rupees.

Immediately, I told the camp manager what had happened and he explained it to the Mahout. The Mahout, 3 men and the elephant went right back into the jungle without even stopping for lunch. I didn't have a lot of hope that they would find the wallet though. Not only had we gone on a long complicated journey, the jungle is not as empty of people as you might imagine. Plenty of people regularly walk up and down the jungle paths.

My uncle and I had a worried lunch after which I retired to my cabin alone to consider from whom I would borrow money so that I could comfortably continue on my journey and how I was going to cancel all of my cards from the remote area where we were staying. I fell asleep. About two hours later, someone called from the jungle. They had found a river of coins gleaming in the sunlight and followed it to my wallet. When they returned, they were smiling triumphantly. My uncle gave the search party about $20 from my wallet, to split 4 ways. I think that I would have given them much more than that, but he said that they all seemed very pleased.

There was the equivalent of $200 US in Nepalese Rupees in my wallet. To give you some perspective about what these men did for me, you need to know that, according to the Wilson Center and the WWF, the average per capita annual income for the country of Nepal is only about $235. In the Terrai region, where I was jungle trekking, the annual per capita income is more like $50. Yes, that is $50 per person per year! That would have been a year's income for each one of them. The next time you go to the jungle in Nepal, let me know and I will happily tell you a very honest group to travel with.

If you look at the pictures of Nepal on my side bar, you can find pictures of tourists riding elephants in the Terrai.