1967

We reached the Dhihola Rest House in the Jim Corbett Park and found ourselves in a very lovely location with a huge banyan tree in the yard. In India what are called Rest Houses are everywhere, built originally for the British supervisors who visited their districts from time to time. Now that India is independent, the houses are used by the Indian officials when needed. We could park on these grounds and rent a room for the bath and to have a fairly well lighted room for reading at night. The Douglasses and we would rent one room together, but we always slept in our motor homes.

Since this was a park, a primitive restaurant was on the grounds, and we ordered our dinner here, and were served mutton and at least three different vegetable dishes which were highly seasoned with curry, and also a plate of rice. They brought us plate after plate of a flat bread, called "chapatis", which we ate to dilute the very sharp, biting seasonings. For dessert, we had a custard with a pink and white sauce which tasted as though it had been flavored with rose water, a common ingredient in India. It was good, but we were a bit afraid to eat it. One never knows about the sanitation although the dishes seemed quite clean, and I didn't detect the greasy look of so many Egyptian plates.

The next morning we got up early because we were to have our first elephant ride. Each couple had an elephant, and we were accompanied by the mahout and a guide whose English was minimal and who wasn't very helpful with identifying birds.

We climbed up to the seat on top of the elephant by way of a ladder. I had brought my usual library of books in a plastic bag, but without an adequate handle I had a problem. Finally solved that annoyance by putting both my camera and my field glasses over my neck, hanging my 8mm camera over the dowel of the platform, and then putting the books into the camera bag where Burt could handle them fairly safely, along with his camera.

It was fun riding on the elephant, but there were times going down a steep bank, when I thought surely our mount would topple over. We sat with our legs hanging over the sides and around the corner dowels, and with one foot resting on a platform at the side. Riding elephants is much more comfortable than riding camels in Egypt. We were out for about two hours, and saw many, mostly unidentified, birds, but few wild animals.

After our elephant ride, we returned to our motor home for some housekeeping chores, but just as we were about to eat lunch, the ranger came by to tell us a herd of elephants had been seen, and if we'd be ready in half an hour, we could ride out. This time the Douglasses and we were on the same elephant, and were out for three hours. We saw some wild elephants and many spotted deer. The trip through the tall grasses was quite exciting although we didn't see as many animals either time as we'd hoped to see, and seeing the elephants here wasn't as thrilling as seeing them in East Africa where we had seen herds of them a few years earlier. Some of the grass was several feet above us as we sat on the elephants so it must have been at least 15 feet high.

The following day was great. I felt that I was following in the footsteps of Queen Elizabeth and Jackie K. both of whom had recently been here. We went tiger hunting on an elephant. A buffalo calf had been put out as a bait, and the tiger had killed the calf, and was sleeping off his meal. Since we had ridden elephants for five hours the day before, we were old hands at getting on and arranging ourselves on the elephant. After a short trip, we unloaded at a watch tower which was very jiggly. Getting off the elephant here, and remounting later was a scary experience. I still remember Lillie Douglass screaming, "Don't touch me, Don't help me", as the rangers tried to help her back onto the elephant's back.

We were warned that we would see the tiger only a few seconds. The elephants would beat the bush, and the tiger was supposed to run through a cleared area. But shucks, only 2 of the 11 on the platform saw anything of the tiger at all. We finally saw some beautiful white tigers in the zoo in Calcutta.

We remounted our elephants and went after the tiger, but he had disappeared. Then a spotter came by telling us there were some more wild elephants, so we set out after them. After a while, we had to dismount again because a land slide blocked the way and the elephants couldn't cross it. We had to walk over some scary slopes and then we saw a female and three immature elephants of different ages and several others. We got quite close to these, and the ranger had a gun, supposedly for our protection, but Ralph Douglass, who knew something about guns, said he didn't think the ranger could even hit an elephant if it came toward us or even that the gun could hurt the elephant very much. Altogether this day we spent seven hours away from camp, and most of that time on the elephant. With the five hours yesterday and the seven today we had put in 11-12 hours of elephant riding. The mahout and elephant costs less than a dollar an hour, and since the Douglasses shared expenses, we had so much fun and a fabulous experience for very little.