Lesson learned: always carry the good camera.
On our initial expedition into the jungles of Chitwan National Park, we countered a Sloth Bear and a Rhino. We chased the Rhino around for a bit, and eventually got a really good clear view of her from behind some trees. The rhino stared directly at me, both ears cocked forward, trying to figure me out, before she finally decided that I wasn’t worth bothering with, and she trotted off into the heavy scrub.
I had only brought my tiny point-and-shoot. I have brilliant, sharp, full-color memories of that rhino, but only a couple of blurry, distant photographs to share with the rest of the world. I took my DSLR and telephoto lens with me on all further expeditions, but to no avail. Apologies.
On our second expedition, we were stopped in our tracks by some distant rumbling on the other side of the bushes. The guide scouted ahead, and quickly hurried back. We heard the sound again, more distinctly a growl. “Tiger. That tiger.” We all stood stock still for a few moments. “The tiger is hunting now. Old tiger. Very dangerous.”
With that, our guide radioed in for Elephant Support. Sadly, the elephants were all off grazing in the fields and were unable to be deployed to our position. We stood about for another fifteen minutes, carefully watching the bushes and surrounding trees. Eventually, our guide decided that if the tiger was going to eat us, he would have done so already. And we continued on our hike.
In the back of my head, I had a vivid daydream about beating the tiger back with a long tree branch (while taking photographs with my free hand), or maybe engaging in a bit of tiger wrassling, but in truth it’s probably all for the best that our tiger encounter did not escalate.
Other than that, we countered a variety of deer, a couple of mongoose, elephants, some wild chickens, millipedes, some toads, a peacock, lizards, a could of wild boar, and more birds than I could shake a stick at. The crocodiles stayed at the bottom of the river, out of sight, quite anti-climatically.
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