Up at 5:30 again this morning after a slightly disturbed night’s sleep because of Brian and Neil dealing with another spider which was threatening to eat them.
Our early morning activity was bird watching around the camp which was fairly interesting but the light coming through the trees was good for some photos. Just after the official bird watching finished we spotted two great hornbills flying over the island, apparently they are as rare as tiger sightings so that was a bit of a bonus.
We had another elephant ride after breakfast which wasn’t as good as the first but we saw some deer. We also witnessed the intelligence of the elephants again – another quiet word and it tried to pull down a branch and later it picked up the stick with the driver had dropped and returned it to him.
We dozed around for most of the morning and at one point we thought we saw a tiger on the other side of the river – turned out to be monkeys but not before we had encouraged lots of people to come rushing over to see the big cat…
At 4pm we went out for another jungle walk. There were 5 of us and 2 guides, one of the guides Jeet stopped us about 30 mins in and explained that he was attacked by three bears at that point a year earlier. Two weeks in hospital and 3 months at home to recover from his injuries. I didn’t really want to continue the walk after that! We got very close to a rhino in a water hole but I was very nervous the whole time – I’d have much rather have been on top of a big elephant.
Just after the rhino sighting we were walking back through the jungle and there was a big crack in the undergrowth and both guides dropped to their haunches, peering through the undergrowth with their sticks ready. It turned out to be fighting monkeys but my nerves were in bits by this point.
Back to the urban jungle that is Kathmandu tomorrow.
