Day 100 Sunday 10 December, Chitwan, Nepal

100 days on the road, but no chance to celebrate as we are awaked before dawn for our first elephant safari, a 2 hr lumbering trek thru jungle, muddy streams and grasslands to the river plain. It’s a beautiful misty sunrise and we see a few birds and a barking deer but no sightings of tigers or rhinos although our mahout assures us they are around. Back for breakfast and then off in the landrover to the river where we canoe gently down the stream, seeing lots of birds. We walk back thru trails with the guides urging us to stick closely together and come to a billabong where there are several 3m crocodiles (called marsh muggers – where the word ‘mugger’ came from on account of their habit of suddenly sneaking up on their defenceless prey) There are also lots of peacocks in the trees (yes they do fly alhtough its not a pretty sight)but no tigers or rhinos. There are however numerous wild elephant tracks and later on we spot a bambi-like samba deer. In the late afternoon we have a rather long and quite jarring elephant safari; the elephant acts like a bulldozer making paths thru the jungle by pushing over trees and breaking off branches which she then proceeds to eat. However our total bag for the entire day is 5 peacocks, 3 crocodiles and 2 deer plus a wild boar.