The Uncommon Menagerie

Abstract

Riding on an elephant’s back offers a privileged, if distorted, perspective on the natural world. Wildlife species that seem large and scary at eye level, such as rhinos and tigers, appear as miniaturized versions from this elevated vantage. My well-trained mount, Kirti Kali, plowed boldly through the dense twenty-foottall grasslands of Chitwan National Park in lowland Nepal, scattering spotted deer and wild boars in our path. On elephant-back one feels invincible. As we emerged from the tall grass into an open area, my driver, Gyan Bahadur, calmly steered Kirti alongside a rare greater one-horned rhinoceros—a dangerous species that, locally, tramples and kills several villagers a year. The two-ton female and her young calf continued grazing peacefully on the floodplain. The rhinos seemed oblivious to our presence because we had spent months habituating these aggressive creatures to close contact. As long as we remained on the elephant, rather than approaching on foot, the mother rhino would remain unfazed and we would stay in one piece.