I spent quite a long time staring at the green plane, watching the sunrise, the haze vanishing and the begining of the day.

We had too stare at the landscape some more hours, as the jeep that would take us to the elephant ride would delay a lot. They said it was because of the elections - the authorities had put limitations on the circulation of any type of vehicule and people had to go voting. That gave us time to go check the prices on the inns nearby.

Finally the jeep appeared and soon we and the japaneses were crossing the river on the back of an elephant. It's quite a cool animal, the elephant. And he isn't too unconfortable, too. He was constantly eating and he did in an amusing way - he extended his trunk, he gathered a great chunch of high (a meter, maybe more) grass that would then be pulled out by with the walking movement. He didn't do any stops to pluck, except when he exagerated on the quantity of grass and he wasn't able to pull out the grass. We saw a rhino who showed very respectful to the elephant (happily for us, I wouldn't like to meet the animal on the ground...).

After dinning at the lodge, we went to the park museum until it was time to go into the park to the "jungle walk". The museum is simply a room with some posters and photographs displaying and explaining various aspects of the wild life of the park. Not much to see, but worth to be seen if one is nearby with time to spend. It's situated in a pleasant garden, where we relaxed on the grass.

The limits of the park are rivers, at least on this part, so we had a canoe ride down the river before the jungle walk started. The canoes they use here are large dugout logs, that carry as much as 8 or more persons, although they are manoeuvered only by one man. They swing a lot when someone moves and changes the center of the gravity horizontally, so one is asked to sit on small benches, so we travel with our head less than half a meter high relative to the surface of the water. It was a nice trip that lasted a little more than half an hour.

Our jungle walk started on the river border. We had a guide that carried a wooden rod as a defense weapon. He said that it was enough and sometimes safer to any potencial dangerous animal - fire weapons aren't alowed inside the park, and an animal hurt by a bullet can be more dangerous than one that was frightened by a hit with the rod. Our group was composed by Vixnu, the two japanese boys, Maria Jose, Vixnu, the guide and me.

The guide pointed us some foot prints where he left the canoe that he claimed that were from tigers and rhinos. We walked for whole afternoon in a real forest jungle, we saw a lot of monkeys, some deers (these only from far away, between the trees and grass, while hidden very quietly) and we heard the roar of some rhinos that were hidden by the "elephant grass". We were told that this time of the year is one of the worst to see wild life in the park because of this "elephant grass", a plant that resemble a little like rush - its heigth is at the maximum, sometimes more than 3 meters high, so one can see nothing of what's going on inside, it's like a corn-field where the corn is 3 meters high. One can be moving very near a wild animal, a rhino for instance, without noticing it until one gets in front of him, and then it can be too late. That was the case of the rhino (s?) we heard. We climbed to a tree, so we could be safe in case they show up and because we had a much better view from that high point. From the noise, they seemed to be less than 10 meters away, but the only thing we saw was the grass moving once in a while.

At night we had the folk show. It was held on a field very near the lodge. There were a lot of people from other inns also. The show was basically a group dance with a music with a strong rhythm made by drums and other percussion instruments. All or most of these instruments were home made handicraft. There was one that was simply a piece of wood with small tin pieces attached with a nail. The chants had a simple refrain that was constantly repeated. The assistance was encouraged to participate in the last dances, which were simple to learn but rather tiresome, as they were full of motion.

The show was held by naturals of the area, from the taru ethnic group. They don't seem much respected by the other ethnic groups or castes (we noticed that much nepali talked about castes and ethnic groups as synonims). Until the 50's, the Terai, this area of Nepal, was a region avoided by almost everyone except the tarus, that live there for centuries. One of the main reasons for it was malaria, quite abundant on the area. The tarus have some natural resistance to the disease. Some say that they came from Rajasthan, the indian state of the marajahs palaces, Southwest of Delhi, the home of the fearsome Rajputs warriors that served and other times fought the powerful Moghul emperors. This migration is supposed to have happened in the 16th century, maybe earlier, maybe later. Malaria began to be fought in the 50's and since then the Terai is being literally invaded by people from other parts of Nepal, that come here atracted by fertile lands and lately by some industries. In fact, Terai is one of the richest and more industrialised areas of Nepal and the tarus are now a minority in their home land. That sometimes causes tensions, made worse by the general poverty of the tarus.