The "Royal Chitwan National Park" is situated in the south of Nepal, on the Terai planes, which is on the Northern border of India, and is so flat because of the presence of the enormous river Ganges. "Chit" means heart and "wan" means woods, or jungle, the same as the Bangladeshi word "ban" in Bandarban and Sundarban. It is a vast protected area, without any roads, and just a few basic resorts, most of them without electricity. Shower between 6 and 7, read and eat between 6 and 9; and get up at 5.30 AM (ouch). Many animals live there, like crocodiles, tigers, rhinos, deer, and of course elephants to transport the tourists.We did not see any tigers, but we saw a crocodile, some deer and many rhinos, even from up close. Contrary to what they may look like, they move very graciously.
We even met a couple of them, who were clearly in the process of getting acquainted. The drivers of the elephants formed a circle around them and made us close them in. I did not feel very good about that, most probably because my imagination showed me a circle of rhinos, closing in on my bed at night.
The rhinos like to bath, but so do the elephants. Bathing the elephants is a regular part of the tourist menu in the safari park. Those tourists who like such an activity, can bathe themselves and the elephants in the river. The best part of the program is, where the tourist climbs the elephant when it is kneeled in the water, it stands up, takes a lot of water in its trunk and showers the tourist. Our Anna also enjoyed that and wanted to participate. The elephant however was much quicker than she expected, and she already gets a big shower before it even stood on its legs. She cried as many tears as the elephant showered water and we had to rescue her immediately. There was no time left for a picture, but the other kids did better on that, luckily.
After the bath, one of the elephants is painted beautifully and that restores Anna's trust in them. She climbs this animal and after ten minutes or so, she is asleep on the uncomfortable wooden bench on it's back.
Between 1850 and 1948, Nepal was not open to tourists. Therefore, the only people who came to this place then, were kings and viceroys and their families. They normally came for hunting, but as their number was so limited, it was not even a major problem when one of the visiting viceroys shot one hundred rhinos in one visit, because in those days, there were far more animals then foreigners. Luckily, the tourists are no longer allowed to kill the animals, because the tables have turned nowadays. And still, rhinos get killed. and are even threatened with extinction. Smugglers kill them and transport the dead animals across the border to India and China. The meat is not of any value, but the horns are ground to powder and sold as a miracle solution against baldness and as aphrodisiac.
The rhinos themselves are practically bald and don’t look very sensual, so the chance of success is zero. Therefore, it is even sadder, that people kill them for this reason.

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