A Little More Adventure…Rare Twin Babies

22 June 2009 Comments

We rounded out our weekend in Chitwan with a ride through the local villages standing up in the back of the jeep with the wind blowing through our hair as we took in the last of our experience on our way to the Elephant breeding center. I don ’t really know how I feel about the breeding center –mixed really. Because the elephant population in Chitwan is not endangered they breeding center is used to breed the elephants that are raised to either do hard labor in the fields or take tourists around the National Park for the rest of their lives. I was a bit surprised and I guess I just figured that the breeding center was there to repopulate the forests…especially since this is a UNESCO site and therefore under international protection. I guess that captured elephants are fair game though since they are endangered.

So even though I had my reservations about the purpose of the breeding center we did make the ride out to the property to check out the baby elephants. The prize animals at the breeding center were twin baby elephants just three months old. This may not seem like such a big deal but according to our guide these twins are the only surviving elephant twins in Chitwan’s history and just the third set to be born here, period.

Twin elephants are extremely rare all over the world and have a really low survival rate. Considering the extremely long gestation time for elephants (22 months!), I feel really bad for the momma elephant who carried these two little guys around for that long.

The twin elephants were loping along after their momma on their way back into the breeding center after leaving with the Mahouts in search of breakfast. The one really sad part about these pictures is the fact that the mother is in chains and it will only be a couple of years before these twins follow suite =(

Another set of elephants, both about two and a half years old were extremely playful and trotted over to us as soon as we passed them. These two guys were really frisky and knew precisely what they wanted –any and all food that was in or bags or in our hands. One of them even walked straight up to me with his trunk extended and tried to take a little tasty of my camera! I assured him that the crackers in the other hand were tastier and pushed and nudged me until I had surrendered all of my food.

One of the final activities at Chitwan was a elephant ride through the jungle to try and spot wildlife. After all of the effort that I went to in Laos to not exploit the elephants, the jungle ride kind of defeated the purpose. But, I did it so there is no use mourning it…all I can do is learn from that an know that I probably could have skipped out on the Elephant riding. With that being said, had I not participated I would not have had the opportunity to see the one-horned Asian rhino. Because the rhinos are extremely dangerous on foot, the elephant was the perfect way to view them without risking serious dismemberment (and I am NOT exaggerating here, one of the other guides had just returned home from the hospital that day because of an attack by a wild rhino!). This rhino was fairly unperturbed by the three elephants circling him…he continued to munch the grass for several minutes before then standing perfectly still and doing a mini photo-shoot for us – he was much more tolerant than the Indian cow debacle!

In addition to the wild rhino I spotted several types of deer, spotted deer and barking deer most notably and even saw a peacock for good measure!

Our group really had no major issues throughout; one of the doctors, a Malaysian guy named Lip Choy was a riot – he took a picture of absolutely everything he encountered. Add to that the fact that he had just completed his own Vipassana Meditation course and he was a veritable chatter box the whole time. Jess and Regina were the two other additions to the Pharping crowd – Jess was amazingly spunky and fun; she just received her diploma in the US and is now a tried and true doctor. Regina is Portuguese and was volunteering in Chapa Goan at the clinic for a couple of months.

I have to say, even though Chitwan was generally safe throughout, it did feel better to have three doctors on the trip – I hope we didn’t bore them with our onslaught of symptoms and questions…after this long on the road Helen and I had a number of small things we wanted to make sure were healthy. Let’s just suffice to say that Asian water and food can do a number on your digestive system! All of the doctors cleared us on our symptoms and told us to wait it out until we rejoined the developed world.

As far as health concerns went throughout Chitwan, all seven of us chose to take anti-malarial medicine because of the parks tropical climate and proximity to India. I have totally opted against Malaria medication thus far in the trip (although it is recommended for all of SEA and India) and just brought deet – and while that worked really well I figured only an idiot would refuse to take anti-malaria medication while all of the doctors in the group were doing it. I already had a three month supply so that was plenty for Helen and me to take recommended dose of Doxycycline every day (and for four weeks thereafter).

Exploring Chitwan was pretty amazing and I, hands down, believe that the elephant bathing ranks as one of the most fun experiences of the trip so far. Perhaps it’s just proximity to the event, but it was amazingly fun and productive for the elephant too!

A few more pictures: