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Note from Jonah: This is the continuation of a photo series from the Great Himalayan Mountain Range. The photos document a journey by car, foot, boat, plane and elephant from Tibet to Nepal.

I first heard of Chitwan National Park many years ago when I was living in New Zealand. It has a reputation for being one of the best places to see wildlife in Asia. Although I wouldn’t describe the wildlife as easy to see as someplace like Australia, the variety of animals found in the park makes Chitwan extremely unique and extremely scary.

Chitwan was the first national park of Nepal and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. The park itself is fairly massive covering an area of 932 square kilometers (580 square miles) — which is about half the size of Yosemite National Park. The park is part of Nepal’s Terai lowlands and is considered subtropical. If you’ve just traveled from the dry Himalayan environment, Chitwan is a bit of a shock at 100 meters in elevation.

Living in this environment, is over 700 species of wildlife, including 43 species of mammals. Both the King Cobra and the Indian Rock Python call Chitwan home; however, the real kind of this jungle is the Bengal Tiger. And although you probobly don’t want to be stairing at a wild tiger in the eye, he isn’t really the most dangerous thing living in this park. What you are really worried about is being trampled by a rhinoceroses.

Apart from enormous snakes, man eating tigers and rampaging rhinos there is a lot of other big game in the park including wild elephants and an enormous variety of large cats. Co-existing with the tigers are:

“Leopards, fishing cats, jungle cats, clouded leopards, leopard cats, marbled cats, golden jackals, Indian wild dogs, sloth bears, Bengal foxes, Spotted linsangs, palm civets, Large and Small Indian civets, several species of mongoose, binturongs, honey badgers and yellow-throated martens roam the jungle for prey. Striped hyenas are rare and prevail on the southern slopes of the Churia Hills. Smooth-coated otters inhabit the numerous creeks and rivulets.”

Of these animals, the rhinos are seemingly the scariest, although its hard to say if I’d rather be in a fight with a crocodile or rhinoceros. When scared or threatened they are known to charge throwing their horn into whatever is in front of them. While I didn’t see a tiger or king cobra, I did see a wild rhino. Thankfully, I was on top of an elephant when I did.

Being on top of this enormous elephant allowed me to get fairly close to the rhino — maybe within 3 meters. The photo above is taken with a 200mm lens to give you an idea of distance. Beyond an elephant, this was the largest wild animal I had ever seen — and its a very weird one. There skin is literally covered with armor extremely similar to what I picture soldiers in the medieval ages wearing. The rhino didn’t seem to mind the elaphant and it hung out for a minute or two, and then buggered off.

For reference, riding on an elephant is just not comfortable.

While rhinos are scary, one of my big long time fears which I picked up in Australia, is my fear of crocodiles. The problem with crocodiles is, you’ll probobly not see it coming till its far too late. Seemingly one of nature’s only successful creations, the crocodile has had no need to evolve for thousands of years. Regardless of what happens, they seem to do ok and keep on, keepin’ on.

One thing I’m always impressed with is the crocodiles ability to remain perfectly still. The crocodile in the top photo was just hanging out with his mouth open waiting patiently for something to float down the river in the wrong place. However, crocodiles are known to study their pray to understand their habitual actions to better their hunting abilities.

Chitwan also made a new record in my book — for having the tallest grass of anyplace I have ever been. Literally, some grass was as tall as 6-8 meters. Now, imagine crossing an enormous field of grass far taller than you, knowing there are gigantic predatory cats cruising around. Than add rampaging rhinos and a large variety of snakes and insects and the grasslands become much less friendly.

I spent three days at the park, one of which I traveled by elephant and one of which I traveled by foot. When traveling by elephant, the tall grass isn’t so bad. However, on foot you become completely trumped by the blades that become as thick as branches. The day I spent on foot, I hired a guide to hike through the park in attempt to track down a tiger. While we didn’t see an actual tiger, we did see many marks of their presence. While looking we did see a variety of other wildlife including this fairly strange spotted deer, which is something like a combination of a deer and a leopard.

I don’t think you can talk about Chitwan without a mention of animal poachers and the treatment of elephants. Although Chitwan has been a national park since 1973, during times of political and military conflict in Nepal, the wildlife has not always been safe from poachers. Today, things are supposedly much better for the wildlife. However, Nepal’s history has not been a smooth one. When the military gets involved in political affairs too much, the poachers have hit Chitwan hard and diminished wildlife populations dramatically.

Elephant rentals are available both in the park and on the outskirts. There are two main forms of rentals here — private elephants and state elephants. I was told it takes two humans to take care of every one elephant. Its a difficult task just to feed the animals alone. Apparently the private owners have been known for not treating the animals very humanly while the state has improved dramatical in their efforts to treat the gigantic animals humanly. Watching the trainers and the elephant drivers, they keep their feet behind the elephants ear’s and seem to steer by applying pressure to one ear or the other. They do whip their heads very hard when they don’t listen or need their attention — which to me did not seem so humane.

An interesting thing about the park is there are both wild elephants and elephants living in captivity. This made me wonder what happens when the two see each other. Does one elephant feel bad for the other? Is the elephant with the human on its head pissed off? Sadly, I’m not sure these animals are the smartest – but they didn’t seem overly happy they were being used as cars. While I did ride one, I didn’t feel so good about myself after.

Road Trip on the Himalayan Shelf: If you’re just joining now, here’s what you’ve missed:

1. Road trip on the Himalayan Shelf
2. Lhasa: City of Sunlight, City in the Sky
3. In Tibet, People’s Liberation Army (mostly) out of site, but not out of mind
4. Attn: Crayola — a new color for you — Tibetan Blue
5. Tibetan Cloudscapes
6. Tibetan Prayer Flags Littering Roof of the World
7. Should you pay for photos? The ethics of travel photography
8. 29 Minutes and 15 Seconds on Mount Everest
9. Desertification stretching from Inner Mongolia to Tibet
10. ‘The journey not the arrival matters’
11. Namaste and welcome to Nepal
12. Kathmandu: The greatest place on earth to get lost
13. Kathmandu: Full of mystery, culture, history — and trash
14. ‘A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles’
15. Who has the strongest necks in the world?
16. Hey hey, they’re some monkeys
17. After the Himalayan: The Terai
18. Watch where you step: Chitwan National Park
19. At the end of the road: Pokhara
20. Final Destination 8 (in 3D): The luckiest travelers in the world
21. Tibet to Nepal: ‘The Journey Not the Arrival Matters’