I came across this little lady while walking through Nepal’s Chitwan National Park with two guides and two randoms, and we were all stoked to spot some cool wildlife after spending most of the day fruitlessly looking.

As we cut through the forest on a barely trodden path, our guide Hup was the first to hear rumblings just off in the distance.  As he crept forward through the tall grass towards a shaded clearing, Hup looked back to say that a rhinoceros was bathing in the small pond.

All three of our tourist company took turns climbing an easy tree for better views over the grass, but as the last of us descended the rhino must have either seen or heard that we were nearby.  The sounds of a charging rhino, I can assure you, lead instinctually to a mad scramble through the woods in what sounds like the opposite direction.  Though the conventional wisdom (according to our pre-trek briefing on how to best escape each of the major predators in Chitwan) is to run at zig-zags to its path that might outflank the rhino in ways that a straight-line path will never outrun it, this flies out the window when you can only see one straight-ish path cutting through dense jungle grass.

Though it seemed like minutes, the charge and flight was realistically probably only 5 seconds or so.  After a few moments to slow our collective heart-rate, the five of us circled around to the less vegetated side of the clearing for a cleaner view of Mama Rhino.  After spying for a bit and playing at being wildlife photographers, we snuck off quietly to avoid a repeat episode.

On the way out of the park, one other wild rhino ran across the jeep path a short ways in front of us, marking only the second animal we had seen for the day.  With the excitement of the first, though, it still felt like a pretty successful hike!