Up at 6am, we had breakfast and then did a short cruise along the river in a dug-out canoe. The canoe seemed overloaded and as the river was very low we ended up stuck several times. I was glad the river was so low as I would have been able to save my camera equipment if we capsized. I still remember Katherine. I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice and in any case I didn't have a paddle or a battle this time.
Once we were back on dry land we went on a jungle walk with our two Indian friends and our non-too-informative guide. I asked "what's making that noise?" and he replied "bird". I didn't think it was a rhino, which by the way, the Nepalese pronounce as rhino-saurus, which conjures up images of one-horned dinosaurs, roaming around the Terai. We did come across a rhino cooling itself in a waterhole but we moved on quickly when it started to move towards the bank. I don't think the guide's stick would have beaten it back and he was probably more scared than us as one of the locals had been killed by a rhino the previous day. All the other animals were scared away by our herd of tourists doing a good impression of a herd of elephants.
Going back we had to wade through the river. The Indian couple weren't too happy at this as no-one had thought to mention it and she was wearing a sari and he was wearing long trousers. In the afternoon we went on a 5 hour jeep ride through the park rather than an hour on an elephant. The jeep ride turned out to be excellent value and we saw lots of everything except tigers and sloth bears, pushed the jeep out of a mud bath, had a good laugh and talked about Sydney with an English lad and an Ozzie girl. We also saw the gharial crocodile farm.
We spent the evening talking to Frank, a 24-year-old, civil engineering student from Stuttgart who supported Nurnberg, didn't like Thatcher, was quite left-wing, liked pubs, watched the BBC and whose English was better than he thought. We discussed politics, TV, music, culture, Americans and fascism. He'd been in Nepal for quite a while and was soon to make the trek to Everest base camp. Sooner him than me.
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