Be Cool [Shannon]

May 24. Krsna, our guide in Chitwan, came to my room and said. "You are going to the culture dance? It is finished." He offered to take me anyway. I said, "No, I'm not going. Jon went with the lodge people." Krsna said, "He is lost." I know Jon was not lost. He had a headlamp.

Krna has been a safari guide at Chitwan Jungle park for 12 years. He's slim and about 30 and takes his work very seriously. He's dismayed at the lack of funding and the rhino poaching. Nepal's military budget is taken up by the war with the Maoists; there's no money to defend national parks, or borders, therfore the rapid disappearance of the Bengal tiger.

On our first evening, Krsna took us on a walk by the Rapti River. Yes, we had to run from a rhino. Because Krsna said so. Two rhinos got unusually close. Ksna was excited, but he said be careful. "Talk low and don't move fast. Can you run? If he comes we have to run away zig-zag. Drop something he can smell to confuse him. A scarf, something. Or climb a tree. Because how they kill is..." He grimaced and whispered that he probably shouldn't tell this story now. But he has seen it. "First they bite you and throw you on the ground. Then they stomp you to death."

I said, "We can go now."

He just laughed. "You are with a guide."

Good thing I didn't know then that tourists and guides are killed by wild elephants and rhinos in Chitwan every year. The rhinos look too dinosaur for words. Triceratops. Primordial uh-oh. Wild elephants will wait forever beneath your tree to have a go at you. The prayer the mahouts say before riding an elephant is "Ganesh ai namah." It means "Excuse me for riding you. Out of respect. Good health to you. Be cool."