Feb 5 - depart from Kathmandu
I didn't finish my email last night, so after a quick breakfast with GS, I went to the Internet shop and quickly answered some of my emails. Then GS and I went to the airport.

Waiting at the airport, I notice a variety of women's clothing. The Tibetan ladies are wearing their apron-smock of heavy material in dark, muted colors, and wear their jet black hair up in a bun. I see Indian ladies wearing brightly-colored saris. Some are wearing lacy brown tatoos on their hands and/or feet. Other women are wearing the camise, a dress over baggy pants, accessorized by a long, rectangular scarf. Then there are the tourists - usually women wearing long pants and shirts.

At the airport, I meet a couple from Colorado who are spending several months in Asia. We compare notes on the various places we've been.

Then on to Chitwan. The flight is in a small, maybe 20 passenger ,plane. I can see the pilot and copilot in the cockpit just in front of me. When we get in the air, we can see the Himalayas, the Lantang area. Below are farms and terraces, and a river. We soon leave the mountains.

Upon arrival, we go through a town - wide dusty streets and dirty storefronts - with many, many vehicles on the road. Then we take a dirt road going past small houses and mud huts. We are in farmland. Some of the houses are covered with mud or dung plaster. Some of these are painted rust red on the bottom and yellowish white on the top. Our lodgings are called Tiger's Island - a main common building with dining room, reception, and kitchen, and a set of bungalows with the nicest bathrooms I have seen in Nepal.

After lunch, we drive on rough roads to the elephant station. The elephant kneels so that we can climb up a ladder to the platform on his back. There are two elephants, with 4 tourists and an elephant handler on each. It is a rough ride, but not as bad as a jeep. Soon we are going through dry jungle. The trees are mostly deciduous. We go for some time until we get to some thicker forest, and the elephants go through the thick underbrush. Sometimes we have to help push aside the tree branches so that we don't get scratched. The elephant pushes branches aside with his trunk or sometimes breaks the branch so that we can go through. Soon, a rhinocerous is spotted. He is just a shape behind the thicket. But after awhile, we are able to see the complete rhino out in the open. They move fast, charging about like a horse when they are surprised. The two elephants work as a team, helping to flush out the rhinocerouses. We see two rhinos in all, and get some good pictures. We also see parrots, some small owls, a hawk, sparrows, some quail-like bords, two pheasants, a bright blue kingfisher, some ducks, cattle egrets, some herons, and several unusual birds I don't know the name of. And we saw a monkey. We also saw huge rhinocerous droppings in many places. They are herbiferous.

When we come back to the elephant station, the other elephant unloads first, kneelng down, and letting the passengers climb down. Suddenly the platform slips, and three of the passengers are dumped. Fortuntely no one was hurt. GS and I are on the other elephant, along with a young woman from Taiwan and a guide. At tea, I talk to a trio who rode the other elephant. They are a mother, her daughter and a man from France. Their English is only a little better than my French, but we communicate and exchange email addresses.

I learn that my friend Ben was here last April and met Raju, a guide whom Ben befriended. After a rest and a Nepali dinner, we have a dancing show put on by the local villagers. We are invited to join in and several of us get into the spirit and dance. First a circle dance, then a more free-form dance. GS sems to enjoy dancing.

It seems the Taiwan girl is seeing a local man who owns a nearby hotel. They invite me to a moonlight rhinocerous walk. We can hear the rhinos across the river, making their snorting and whistling sound. We walk along the river bank to where the rhinos are expected to cross.

They are spotted with the aid of binoculors and by listening for them - across the river. They are moving around, fighting with each other.

After awhile, they start to cross the river. At one point they are about 2/3 the length of a football field from us. If they charge us, we are to go straight up the bank, because rhinos cannot climb very well. They are expected to go up a less steep ravine. But the rhinos stop suddenly, and snort. It seems some villagers have positioned themselves so that they can throw rocks at the rhinos. These rhinos have been coming up into the villages and eating the wheat. The villagers no longer plant wheat near the river, but plant only mustard, which is bitter, there. The villagers have to make bonfires, bang pots and pans, yell, or hit them with a stick to drive them away (with a stick in one hand and a torch in the other). What an exciting night! Now, as I am typing this, the dogs are barking. I wonder if the rhinos have come back? I heard that the villagers do not keep watch near the river all night.

After I went to bed, there was still much banging going on - the villagers were trying to scare away the rhinos. The guides said that there were too many rhinos in the park, and that some of them had to be moved.

February 6
GS and I had breakfast at 6:30 am. The French trio had left and the Taiwan girl and her friend had gone to Lumbini - the birthplace of Buddha. So GS and I are the only guests. After breakfast, we go for a jungle walk. Raju is our guide. We, four Nepalis and myself, take a boat across the river and into the wild area. Although we do not see a rhino, we hear one and Raju flushes him from his postion and then tells the others to force him to pass where I am standing. But the rhino disappears and we don't see him. The tracks are large - each toe print is the size of a deer print, and so the entire print is over a foot long and nearly a foot wide. The droppings are also huge, and we see many of these. We see a sapling that has been almost pushed over by the rhinos. We also find tiger prints, many of them. Also the small prints of the civet cat and some deer prints of varying sizes. Also human foot prints (unshod). We see some barking deer (reddish brown in color) far away when we enter the dry river bed. And Raju spots many deer in the forest, but I just catch a glimpse or hear them rustling. Some if them are spotted deer. In addition, we see places where the sloth bear has dug. There were also a couple of monkeys - a rhesus macaque. We see many birds: the emerald dove, pied flycatcher, pond heron, Jerdon's babbler, black-headed oriole, spotted dove, great pied hornbill (they make a long, continuous call with pitch going up and down), pied bushchat, ruddy shelduck (a duck that migrates from Siberia), large egret (yellow bill, black legs), pied kingfisher, marganzer duck, a grey tit (black and white face), (with an orangish yellow color - sings a pretty song), green parrots, parokeets, crested serpent eagle, black ibis, and paradise flycatcher. And a large red insect - the red cotton bug. Now that I am back at my bungalow, there are some humongous bees (the guide says they are wood beetles, but the sound like bumble bees) flying around here - black in color.

The predominant flower around here grows as a weed between cultivated fields. It has a blue flower, looks a lot like Penny Royale, but the guide says it is casulexlaria. Another common plant is the clarodendron (looks like a simple-flower rhodedendron). There is also the bush morning glory that is pretty but seems to be taking over.

I find out that our shower water is heated by firewood. There seems to be plenty of firewood in this area. There is little power for electricity - a couple of very dim lights. In the Terai district, where we are, malaria has been nearly eradicated with the help of USAID. The Tharu people were here before malaria elimination - they are malaria resistant. After the mosquitos were taken care of, great numbers of people came to the Terai to farm. Now the area is overcrowded with not quite enough farmland to go around.

I taked to a young man, Pyamod Kumar Chaudhary, who is a guide here at Tiger's Island. He is a local Tharu. He tells me that he is very interested in overpopulaion in Nepal. The growth rate is over 2%. (This will double in 35 years). The local people are farmers who pass the land on to their sons. Their daughters go live with their husband's family. The farmers are having many children because they do not understand the impacts of an overgrown population. Just as the numbers of rhinosin the park has increased beyond sustainable numbers, so has the numbers of people in the Terai region grown beyond sustainability, through immigration to the regions from the mountains and from natural increase. The women are discouraged from working outside the home and know not much besides having babies. The owner of the resort joins in the conversation. He tells me the schools are very poor. The locals can rarely pass the exam after 10th grade because they do not have the basics. Only if a parent can afford to send their child to private school can he or she get the basics. He says that the local people are lucky in that they can earn some extra money by sorting, sifting, and crushing rocks in the river to sell for road-building. Children and young women are involved in this process for a few hours a day - a way to supplement the food needs for the family. If a family does not have an outside income, they often sell their rice crop - and then do not have enough to eat. Often families will send their children away to Kathmandu to work in a factory for a living. Even though it is illegal, children are still working in the carpet factories in Kathmandu. It is a choice between starving or working. There are very few jobs in the Terai regon. There is not enough land per person to sustain food security.

The people have a comunity forest where they are in charge and community rules govern the taking of firewood and harvesting of other forest products. It belongs to the community and thus people learn good conservation practices. The national forest where the rhinos are is subject to poaching and the taking of firewood. When we were walking in the preserve, we saw where trees had been cut along the boundary - villagers had come across the river and cut them. Rhinocerous horn is valued as an aphrodesiac by certain rich Asians. Middlemen will pay locals as little as 50-100 rupees (about $1-$4 USD) to get a rhino horn. The local is often caught, but the middleman and the buyer is never traced.

I ask what is the amount of land needed to live on and the answer is 10 kata per person. A kata is 100 X 30 feet, so 10 kata is about 2/3 of an acre. The locals grow about 3 crops a year - first rice during the monsoons, then either lentils, mustard or wheat, and then corn. The crops are poor when so much of the nutrients in the ground are thus used.

There is a new program called Parks and People which will compensate people living on the buffer zone of the park - for the raiding of thier crops by the rhinos They will be able to spend the money as they wish - perhaps for fencing to keep the rhinos out.

There are too many rhinos in the park - so some are moved to another park every year.

The village has a small amount of power - not enough to run a television, but maybe a radio and a dim light - not enough to read by. The electricity comes from a hydro project - a dam. [Because so much topsoil come downstream from the mountains, the dam is likely to dilt up in a short time.]

February 7
I awaken at 2:30am. Some men are shouting. I go up on the roof terrace and see two torches - men are chasing a rhino to the river. There is a full moon, but it is too misty to see. When the men approach the river, I hear splashing. - the rhino is going back across the river.

In the morning we visit the village - the same one with the dancers who came to entertain us. We see the activities of village live: mat making - oxcart making, a rice pounder, a kitchen, mud plaster making, an old blind woman peeling some vegetables, a baby's cradle hanging from the rafter on the porch, mango and guava trees, and the many domestic chores which are done outside - bathing children, washing hair, sweeping the porch, and drawing water from the well.