Quest for the one-horned rhino

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated” — Mahatma Gandhi

In 1981 I attended a fundraiser in Lusaka, Zambia, for something called “The Save the Rhino Trust,” along with a raft of ideologues, NGO officers, and the elite of the country. The president of the country at the time, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, urged me to take the stage at one point and make a pledge for the cause. I had never seen a rhino in Zambia, or anywhere outside of a zoo for that matter, but I was starting to bring adventure travelers to Zambia through my company Sobek, mostly to raft the Zambezi, but some to take walking safaris.

“I promise to use all my resources to inspire travelers to come here and see the last of the rhinos so that they might be touched by their plight, and become involved in their preservation,” I swore to the audience.

But I never made good on that pledge. And when I returned to Zambia last year, all the rhino were gone.

Rhinos once roamed the earth in countless numbers. They padded across Africa, most of Asia, even Europe and North America. But now most have disappeared. Over the last 30 years I traveled all through Java, Sumatra, Borneo, China, Nepal; the length of Africa from Algeria to Zimbabwe. But I had never seen a rhino in the wild.

So, when my old friend Avinash Kohli visited me in Los Angeles a few months ago, he shared some news that inspired me to pack the bags and head to the airport. Like me, Avinash has been in the travel business his whole career, but he has specialized in private, upscale tours to the wild places of India. He had guided The Beatles, Mia Farrow, Jimmy Stewart, kings and other royalty, even Sir Edmund Hillary. But he was more excited than ever before because he had just returned from a place that was wilder than anyplace he had seen in India ... and, it harbored rhinos ... one-horned rhinos, the ones many believe spawned the unicorn myths. “There are rhinos coming out of your ears,” he said. “You have to come to Assam!”

Laura Hubber Richard Bangs with Avinash Kohli.

I went to the Web, confirmed Avi’s assertion, and found Assam on the map. It spreads like a kite in the far northeast of India, across a thin isthmus of land that in the last minute of Partition negotiations in 1947 escaped becoming what is now Bangladesh. India wanted to keep it because of its oil (it now supplies half of the subcontinent’s needs); China invaded in 1963, and because of border disputes, and secessionist movements, it has been off the world tourism map for most of the last half century. During British colonial days it was known for its tea, and vast estates still sprawl. But I also saw a report that estimated that in 1905 there were fewer than 200 one-horned rhino left in Assam; another account estimated that figure at less than a dozen. Rhinos were on the precipice of extinction in Assam just a century ago; within a sniff of becoming a relic of the past.

But now, as per all the reports, there are more than 2,000 rhinos in Assam, and that number is growing. What went right in Assam? I decided to go and see. And Avinash offered to be my guide.

We arrived in the dense and pungent capital of Guwahati ... over a million people call this home, and I am forever amazed that cities of this size pound and thrive with little awareness of their existence in the West. I confess, even with a lifetime in the travel business, of never having heard of the place.

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We stayed at the Hotel Brahmaputra Ashok on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra River, and took a sunset cruise. The Brahmaputra begins in Tibet as the Tsangpo, flows by Lhasa, loops north, and then abruptly turns south, cutting through the Himalayas, where it has carved the deepest gorge in the world. I long lusted to float the Brahmaputra. I made first descents of several great rivers of Asia, from the Yangtze to the Indus to the Euphrates, but the one that always made me yearn was the Brahmaputra ... such a tantalizing name, wet with contour and risk. The syllables slide over and around one another like intertwined snakes. And then there are the layers of resonance of this river, managing to evoke temptation and fear at once.

So to sail its waters, even in its quiet breath after its gasp through the Himalaya, was a thrill.

But also an explanation. One of the reasons wildlife has prospered here through the ages is this prodigious river. Every year the Brahmaputra floods, bringing rich soil and nutrients from the Himalayas, replenishing vast tracks of soil, soil that grows the grass and vegetation that forever feed the wildlife.

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