More rhinos means more encounters

Even before reaching Chitwan National Park, visitors to Nepal notice abundant imagery of the sanctuary’s most celebrated animal: the Greater One-horned Rhinoceros. It appears on posters at Kathmandu airport, a pair guards the steps of a temple that collapsed in the 2015 earthquake, and in Sauraha it is on hotel murals and wood carvings for sale to tourists. 

Live rhinos are the park’s most important attraction but rhinos often venture outside its boundaries, and a video of one roaming the streets of Sauraha at night has gone viral on YouTube. The rhino has a place in Nepali culture: it is featured on a bank note and gaida is now shorthand for Rs100.