Want to see rhinos in Chitwan? Go find a waiter called Santos

If it wasn't for Santos I don't think I would have seen any rhinos in Chitwan National Park.

These days spotting one is a matter of luck - due to lack of surveillance, poachers have been enjoying a field day in Chitwan.

I booked two trips to the national park, both on the same early November day as that way I could escape paying the park fee of 500 rupees twice.

At 6.30 I embarked on a canoe which took me to the park. The 50 minute ride was nice. I saw a silly looking small gharial crocodiles and some XL-sized birds I don't know the name of.

We got dropped off at a sandy beach. Then it was only me and my guide, a plomp little fellow, whom you wouldn't think would survive in the jungle a minute. He was the man I actually booked the jungle safari with the previous night. I thought he was just running the travel aganecy - he certainly had all the characteristics of a travel agent. The fellow was jokey and a tinsy bit slimy, the type you wouldn't want to trust your life with in the jungle but almost decent for a travel agent. Seeing him in his greens, ready to accompany me to the jungle was quite shock.

In to the jungle we went.

"Sometimes rhinos come here to graze", he told me when we were walking through some grass that towered high above our heads, his in particular.

"But not today", I filled in.

"Not today."

We kept repeating this conversation a numerous time during out jungle walk.

There were a few monkies and a lonely looking dear but other than that, no animals were to be seen in Chitwan, Nepal's prime natural park.

I came back from the jungle walk utterly dissappointed, which was stupid as I did know that sightings can be rare in Chitwan. But one always hopes, that this walk, the walk I'm doing, is a successful one. Hope. The wrong attitude for any safari activity.

Irritated, I went to look for lunch. I ended up in Tiffins by the river, a good way from the crowds. Tiffins was empty this time of the day - I was later to learn that Tiffins is always empty, which is a shame, cause the family who runs the place is too nice for the over-touristy Sauraha which is where you live when you are visiting Chitwan.

I told Santos, the family's eldest son, and a handsome at that as well, about my unlucky safari.

He's response blew me by surpise. He was so sincerely sorry for me, the fat white tourist I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

This young man, who's family had moved to Sauraha from their native Gorkha in pursuit of a better life, but who were barely making it there, looked at me which such a sorrow in his eyes that he would have made pre-divorce pricess Diana look like Tinkerbell on amphetamine.

When I left to hop on an elephant safari, he said:

"I really wish you'll see a rhino", like seeing a rhino really that important.

I probably should mention that I've seen quite a few rhinos in South Africa's famed Kruger park. The greedy tourist in me just wanted to see a rhino again. I had paid for it, hadn't I?

So off I went to get on an elephant. I got a nasty back seat on the dumbo and bickered about that too, of course.

Then five minutes in to the jungle we spotted two rhinos. There they were, right at the entrance grazing away like rhinos do, unbothered about what's going on around them. The beasts can't really see much, but they are big enough not to have any natural enemies so they don't give a rats ass about honky tourists zooming their cameras at them.

After the 1,5 hour long safari I went running to Tiffin.

" I saw a rhino! I saw two! And it's all because of you hoped for me to see one."

Santos smiled.

I ordered a Gorkha beer and their Kaju set, which is Nepalese flattened rice, dal, fried potatoes, garlicky buffalo and pickle and watched the sun set over the jungle.