We booked a canoe tour down the river where we’ll go downstream for an hour and then walk back through the park for about two hours. The canoe is a fantastic looking dug-out that lies pretty low in the water, it reminds me of photos I’ve seen from Botswana where they use these for water based safaris.
We set off down the river with our guide Mhyes, a national park guide and a young canoe man. They pointed of various birds to us, and we spotted both kinds of crocodiles that live in the park.
Suddenly there is an excited exchange in Nepali between the men in our canoe – and then everybody is pointing and whispering “Rhino! Rhino!” and just a little further up the river is a rhino! The very reason we came to Chitwan. It was a little nerve-racking as the rhino has placed itself right where the river divided into two with a small island in between and we had to go the other way round the little island and thus lost it out of sight for a minute or two – it felt like 10 minutes! We were so worried it would wander back into the forest but luckily it was still grassing right at the edge of the river when we came round the other side!
The guides assured us that we were very lucky to see a rhino on a canoe trip, though I’ve heard of other people who’ve also seen a rhino on a canoe trip – but we did feel lucky! There are about 500 rhinos in this large park, though during the maoist fighting the numbers dipped really low, luckily now the poaching is much less of a problem and the rhinos are again thriving in Chitwan, it is one of the only places in Asia where there are still rhinos. So yes, we did feel lucky.
A little further down the river a women was carrying a load of grass down the bank, our guides shouted to her about the rhino in her path a little further up and she promptly turned around! Rhinos are quite aggressive and kill people every year in and around the park.
