Freed by Tongan Freedom Fighters, Claycamps Search for Nepal Rhino

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Editor’s note: This is another of Centralia resident Hank Claycamp’s periodic articles about his trips around the world.

 Sorry about the two-month interlude between stories. The truth is we were held captive by Tongan freedom fighters on an island near Hong Kong and had no Wi-Fi.

They made us promise to write a story about their plight and then they let us go, so here we are in Chitwan National Park in Nepal.

In the morning the divine Lady Linda and I set forth across the crocodile-infested water to go find a wild rhino.

We were supplied with two little Nepalese guides who told us don’t worry about tigers ’cause they sleep in the daytime.

If we see an angry rhino throw your back pack at it and run behind a tree. Hey, wait a minute! That’s all my sketches he would stomp on.



If we see an angry sloth bear we all get together and yell at it and maybe we can scare it away.

  But, if we get surprised by a rogue elephant, they said it was every man or woman for themselves.  We were told to run for the river and jump in. Wait! the crocs are waiting for you there, hmmm, must be better to be chomped than stomped I guess.

  After a morning stepping on rhino poop we got back across the river and both confided we were glad we didn’t see any of these critters

So the afternoon we did a successful jeep safari and met Rasputin the Rhino, a pretty friendly guy.

He was 4,000 pounds of slobber built like an Abrams tank. Pretty majestic.

Anyhoo, now that we survived this we leave for a month in India and then it’s tigers, tigers.