I am going to see a Nepalese rhino. There are only 800 left in the world and I am going to see one, riding into the jungle on the back of an elephant. I am determined. So determined, I have braved the chill of a Kathmandu autumn morning to catch the bus to Sauhara, the closest village to the Royal Chitwan National Park and home of the Nepalese rhino.

It is 5.30am when I make it, bleary eyed, to the bus station - an informal linear space carved out of the city's main street by a number of hulking masses of buses parked bumper to bumper. I have been in Nepal for three months and I have learnt this: the traffic is a nightmare insane whirl of taxis, cycle rickshaws, pedestrians and animals, but nobody, and I mean nobody, argues road space with a bus.

The sky is grey in early morning. Passengers jostle for pavement space alongside the line of buses. There must be some 15 buses, each with its own tout yelling route details over the noise. There are buses for Pokhara, Bhairahawa, Janakpur, India, and the Tibetan border. Scrawny old men nimble up bus ladders to the roof. It must be the effects of early morning, but I swear the bundles they load are bigger than themselves, and packed solid with rice.

Once I have consumed the socially correct amount of roadside tea - brewed in a cast-iron kettle over a gas flame, the vendor hunkering down on the pavement to inspect the process and his teenage son bargaining prices - I judge myself ready to board the bus, climbing over children and the odd box of sundry supplies being transported out the city. The roof is fully loaded with rice sacks and some men are making themselves comfortable on the sacks, settling in for the long journey on the roof.

The journey itself is barely 200km, but I know that, Nepali style, it will take approximately eight hours to reach Sauraha. We will stop for innumerable police and army security checks, breakfast and lunch. There will be at least one stop every hour when the driver will pull off to the side of the road and all the men on the bus will get out to relieve themselves. The few women on the bus, foreigners included, are urged not to leave the bus on these occasions. 

The road itself is a single lane dirt track winding its way down the last of the Himalaya mountains to the Terai, the futile flat plains of Nepal.

The geographic layout of Nepal is unique. It is the only country in the world to go from the highest point on Earth - Mount Everest at over 8 000m above sea level - to that of the Terai, at only 150m. The drop makes for some interesting soil erosion problems - and some of the most fertile land in the area.

The Terai is a mixture of dense green jungle and open grasslands. It is not the surroundings in which I would expect to find a rhino - I had an idea of an African rhino, grazing in open grass plains. I did not expect to have to go traipsing through a jungle.

I also did not expect the Terai to be so beautiful. On my first day, I took enough photos to be ashamed of myself. The area surrounding Sauraha is a yellow mass of open fields of ready-to-harvest rice. Against this is contrasted the brightly clad harvesters, lined against the yellow rice and blue sky in bright colours. The women wear saris of red and blue, a toddler in one arm and swinging a machete with the other.
 
And of course there are the elephants, treated as family pets by their owners. My first night in Sauraha I spent listening to the village elephants trumpeting to each other in the darkness, tethered to poles outside the front door of their owners' homes just like a regular pet.

Perhaps it was also the excitement. There are few vehicle tracks in the Royal Chitwan National Park so, if you want to see a Nepalese rhino you don't take a jeep, you climb an elephant and wander off into the jungle on its back. I had never ridden an elephant before.

I was woken up that morning by a fresh-faced cheerful safari guide - who promptly handed me a cup of coffee. It was 6am. Fifteen minutes later, we were four nervous looking foreigners being instructed on the correct technique to board an elephant - step just above the tail, lightly, then one more step and into the basket on her back. She did not seem as perturbed as I was at this.

As we strode off into the park, our bodies swaying with the elephant's gait, my legs wrapped loosely around my corner of the basket, I looked down. I should never have done this. My legs tightened in fright and I had a moment of true awareness: don't let anyone fool you, the ground is a long, long way down on the back of an elephant.

I placate my mind, in the tight grip of panic, by reminding myself that this is not South Africa, and that the best way to see a rhino in Nepal is on an elephant - for the very reason you are so high up. I concentrate on the dense jungle in front of me, the green lushness of the jungle floor. The elephant walks through places I did not think a creature of its size could get through, grabbing succulent bits of tree branch - often a metre long - in the process.
 
Where the open grasslands meet the forest our guide calls a stop. There is a loud rustle on the edge of the clearing and he points, urging the elephant forward. Before us confused tourists are aware of it, there is a Nepalese rhino two metres in front of us. He is facing away from us and I am surprised at the thick armoured plating on his back and rear.

The elephant moves forward again and the rhino turns, its single horn facing us, and backs off a little. I realise there are benefits to going Nepalese rhino spotting on the back of an elephant - I am two metres away from one and the rhino has not budged, it simply gazes at me in profound complexity. It looks as confused as I am, wondering what I am doing on the back of an elephant in its jungle.

Slowing it turns and, non-plussed, rustles itself into the surrounding jungle, disappearing into the green in seconds.  Our guide hails the safari a success and we trundle off back to the village.

That night the elephants trumpeting to each other in the darkness dimmed to the sounds of the aches in my body - turns out that riding an elephant leaves an interesting multi-coloured assortment of bruises and pains in muscles I did not know I had. But I had seen a Nepalese rhino, the pain is worth it.

Published in Weekend Argus Travel 2006, February 2006