Rhino rush

I broke my own rule of not doing spur of the moment trips to rush to Manas National Park, hoping to photograph a rare melanistic leopard family. Nature, however, had a completely different script written for us.

We missed the leopards by just 24 hours. Disappointed? Yes. But the wild was about to give us the thrill of a lifetime.

During a tense afternoon safari on a narrow single track, a jeep came racing toward our convoy “MVI chasing!" and that was enough for people to know who was coming . This rhino was know to attack jeeps so was called a motor vehicle inspector.

Before we could react, the giant appeared. We were the lead vehicle. It charged, slamming into our front mudguard and shoving the jeep backward. What followed was pure high dosage of adrenaline. The rhino lifted us from the side, trying to topple the vehicle, then moved to the rear and lifted us from behind. At one point, its massive head was inside the jeep, literally inches away from us.

Huge respect to our driver, who stayed ice-cool. He waited for the perfect window, fired up the engine, and floored the accelerator to move away with the rhino chasing us .you might be wondering why the driver did not start earlier. the reason was the Rhinos tend to get more aggressive when they hear the noise of the engine.

Sharing some photos I clicked before he hit us and a video of the whole episode collected from various bystanders and stitched to give you a chance to see what we saw and experienced up close.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/dcff2e_295da14f7e034315952176874e7e4c9c/480p/mp4/file.mp4