which also occupies the majority of its territory.

The white peaks have always attracted man

who considered them first as deities, then later as challenges.

But, further down, the secret forests of this part of the world conceal the most ancient

of all legends.

The human settlers of these valleys have had to find ways to survive on these sheer slopes.

Along the slopes they have created a safe place in which to grow their crops, away from

the wild beasts of the valley floor.

Their terraced fields look directly over the forests below, a superb vantage point from

which to survey the jungle of the unicorn.

In 398 B.C., the Greek historian Ctesias wrote a book about India and Nepal, and for the

first time spoke of a wild beast which, to this day, continues to fascinate mankind.

The inhabitants of the forest knew of its presence, and in the shadows of the humid

jungle its smell still lingers.

The legend lives here; the magical creature with a single horn, spoken of in countless

cultures, emerging from the mists of time, the most sought-after mystery.

But this animal has long been cursed, and time has not changed that. In the twenty-first

century it is still hunted, for the power that grows on its forehead.

We are going to enter the enchanted forest, the birthplace of the legend

ON THE TRACKS OF THE UNICORN.

Along the border between Nepal and India, there runs a strip of rainforests which alternate

with the meadows of the lowlands. Open jungle whose floor, rich in pasture, provides food

for many species of herbivores.

After Africa, these forests possess the greatest variety of animal species in the world.

And nonetheless, due to their inaccessibility, they remain virtually unknown.

Large deer such as the sambars are the food of the king of the shadows.

The presence of the Bengal tiger means the herbivores of the jungle must constantly be

on the alert. Danger is ever-present.

The pattern of the skin of this great feline forms part of the landscape, as it hunts for

the meat it needs to maintain its almost 300 kilos of striped body.

But the tiger is not the only giant of these forests. On the intense green ground there

is an animal which not even he would dare attack.

The gaur.

Weighing one thousand kilos, it is the largest wild bovine in the world.

A ton of bad temper, standing up to two metres tall.

The gaurs are not only have nothing to fear from the

tigers, but will even trample them down if one crosses the path of the herd.

A less violent way to escape from the tiger is to climb up into the higher levels of the jungle.

That is precisely what the langurs do. In India, these animals are sacred, as,

in their religion, they are related to the monkey god Hanuman. These primates are exclusively

vegetarian, specialised in the consumption of leaves. Such a poor diet that they are

forced to be constantly on the move across the roof of the jungle, in search of a decent tree.

More nutritious than leaves are these large flowers, on which the humming birds feed.

These birds are experts at extracting the sweet nectar contained inside the corollas,

along with the tiny insects that seek refuge there.

Their constant visits carry the pollen from one flower to another,

pollinating them, and so contributing to keeping the forest alive.

All these biological marvels were already here two thousand years ago, when the first

travellers spoke of this land as a magical place, inhabited by fantastic creatures, above

all one in particular, the unicorn.

Its horn, which they called an “alicornis”,

was a sure antidote to any poison, which it immediately detected and neutralised. This

made it greatly desired by kings and noblemen, always afraid of being poisoned. Some of them

offered vast fortunes in exchange for one.

Romans and Greeks spread the myth and, thanks

to a translation by Luther, it entered the bible itself, where it is quoted seven times.

The Roman Aelianus speaks of the cartazon, a term taken from the Sanskrit kartajan, which

means “Lord of the Jungle”; and Pliny the Elder calls it monoceros, with the head

of a deer, the feet of an elephant, and the tail of a pig.

But without a doubt, the most important description was that of the Roman Julius Solinus, who

defines it as “a monster with a terrible roar, and a horn springing from the centre

of its forehead, of marvellous splendour, four feet in length, and which can never be caught alive.”

The chronicler was not far from the reality. The myth lives here, and it is the Indian

rhinoceros. Its means of defence was, in fact, imported into Europe until the end of the

eighteenth century, as “unicorn horns”, to be used as remedies for a wide range of

illnesses, and this belief still continues in traditional Asian medicine.

Its leathery skin was also used for defence by men, in the form of shields for the soldiers.

This armour plating protects them from attacks by tigers.

The fact that man coveted certain parts of its body brought the Indian rhinoceros to

the verge of extinction, and by 1960 barely a hundred remained.

The massacre did not cease

until 1976, when a division of the Nepalese army was given the task of protecting them

from attacks by poachers.

These characteristic jungles are crossed by major rivers which, in the rainy season, overflow,

forming extensive flood plains.

The climate is sub-tropical, with the summer monsoon accounting for 90% of the annual rainfall.

When the monsoon arrives, the vegetation literally explodes, covering everything.

The flooded plains fill with “elephant grasses”,

so called because of their size, as they grow up to eight metres high.

In reality, it is

an ideal ecosystem for plant-eaters, the many different species that feed on grasses, which

occupy and colonise it, forming an intricate tapestry.

The incredible exuberance of the vegetation is hell for man, but not for the plant-eaters,

who gorge themselves on the gigantic feast that covers everything.

At this time of year, the rhinoceroses and a number of species of deer, such as the sambars

and the chitals, spend many hours here.

Just a few hundred years ago, the Indian rhinoceros

grazed on all the flood plains of the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, but now it

has been reduced to just two national parks: Chitwan in Nepal and Kaziranga in India.

This region, called Terai, forms the northern border between India and Nepal, and is occupied

by ecosystems characteristic of the salt forests and grasslands flooded by seasonal rises in

These are the lands of the Indian rhinoceros,

the final refuges of the unicorn.

Here in the Kaziranga National Park, the river Brahmaputra floods over every year, fertilising

the entire plain with silt so rich that the vegetation is among the most exuberant, the

variety of species among the greatest in the world.

Three quarters of the Park is then flooded, and when the waters retreat, innumerable swamps

and marshes, called “bheels”, remain.

This is when this wildlife paradise really comes alive.

70% of the world population of Indian rhinoceroses live here; for them, and for the Asian elephants,

water provides a refuge from the heat, and a place in which their enormous body weight

is a little easier to bear.

In 1985 this Park was declared a World Heritage Site, and to preserve this treasure, the Indian

government put into action one of the greatest conservationists initiatives in the world:

in Kaziranga there is one guard for every square kilometre.

Another of the treasures of these jungles is the only animal capable of taking advantage

of the meat of herbivores as large as the great buffalos.

It is also hunted by the poachers, but its major concern is finding enough to eat.

The presence of the tiger is the cause of one of the greatest problems – the coexistence

of the National Parks and the people who live close by them.

In the country as a whole, at least 50 people die every year from tiger attacks; between

3 and 5 in Chitwan alone, almost always due to imprudence on the part of the victims.

But the tiger avoids humans whenever it can. It would rather risk its life trying to bring

down an enormous buffalo.

This one has been badly injured in a fight with one of the great striped felines. Its

hindquarters, its back and its face have been clawed and bitten, and it has lost an eye.

With humidity of around 90%, the wounds will not easily heal, and internal infections will

kill it. Separated from the herd, all it can do is wait for the tiger to return and finish

off the job.

Now, it is easier to understand the function of the armour-plated skin of the rhinoceros.

You can eat in peace if you have that kind of protection from possible attackers.

But our unicorns have a taste for the high grasses of the banks of the swamp, and both

in Kaziranga and here in Chitwan, these grasses are also a valuable resource for the human

populations living around the edge of the park.

Since 1973, when it was declared a National Park, due to the fact it was the only place

in Nepal where rhinoceroses remained, a number of human settlements have been moved, the

people transferred to more fertile places without wild herbivores.

However, 310 villages

have not been able to be relocated, and they remain in direct contact with the Park.

When the season arrives, the local inhabitants cross the river, and enter the reserves, armed

with their recently-sharpened sickles.

Here they find what they are looking for. The natives have a legal concession to harvest

The natives have a legal concession to harvest the high grasses each year.

Around 60,000 people gather almost 11,000 tonnes during

harvest time, which lasts for 15 days or so.

The bushels accumulate, reaching a market value of some 450,000 dollars.

After taking off the costs of permits and labour, the net contribution to the local

economy is around 250,000 dollars.

As well as the income from sales to the paper industry, the grasses are also a basic construction

material for these people. They are also used to feed the domestic cattle, which cannot

stray far in search of pasture, for fear of being attacked by tigers.

The heavy monsoon rains make constant repairs to the roofs necessary.

This is also done with dried grass.

Wherever in the world there are people living

in a subsistence economy, we only need to see what the roofs are made of to know what

is the most accessible, cheap local material.

Underground water, clean and healthy, is, fortunately, abundant. And from this, and

the soil, the women make adobe which, of course, also includes grass among its ingredients.

But not all land uses are as uncontroversial as the harvesting of elephant grass.

Wheat and cotton fields are slowly replacing stretches of jungle.

Here, man is constantly present, carrying out the different tasks in the course of the year.

And this creates problems with the local wildlife.

These towers, called “machams” are watchtowers from which to spot wild animals.

There is always a lookout on duty,

ready to raise the alarm whenever a tiger or a rhinoceros enters

the fields, posing a threat to the workers’ lives.

In reality, all the animals are doing is returning to places that were always theirs, but which,

little by little, have been stolen from them by man, who knows how to turn to his advantage

the greatest enemy of the jungle.

But the rainforests of Asia are almost as old as fire itself. They have tremendous powers

of regeneration, the ancient strength of vegetation.

Certain species are invulnerable to fire. They do not burn, they simply resist.

The semul trees are fire-proof, and they are therefore the final refuge in the jungle.

“Chitwan” means “The Heart of the Jungle”. And once more in this part of the world legend

and reality go hand in hand.

The fact that certain species burn and others don’t, favours the growth of the so-called

“secondary forest”, different from the original jungle, clearer and with more light,

in which grass is able to grow on the ground.

It is the perfect place for the ungulates, a paradise for deer, who here form herds,

unlike their solitary relatives in the “primary forests”.

The ancient inhabitants of the primitive jungle search

are forced to climb up ever higher in of food.

This is also home to a bird which, for three thousand years now,

has been an aesthetic symbol for man.

This is the land of the peacock, the place in which evolution created such a strange creature.

It is the national bird of India, sacred for Hindus and Buddhists

alike, the destroyer of snakes and, according to popular belief, capable of them. hypnotising

The characteristic territorial cry of the males warns rivals that this territory is occupied.

Then, the suitor displays his feathers, one metre sixty centimetres long, in the hope

of sufficiently impressing one of these visiting females

that she will agree to be the mother of his eggs.

The females prefer the males with most peacock

eyes, and these continue to grow throughout their lifetime. So, the older the male, the

larger his tail, and the more females he is able to attract.

Such a flamboyant display in the middle of a jungle full of tigers is a risky business

but, in nature, nothing ventured nothing gained. And, what is more, the more superbly decorated

the males, the less they participate in rearing the chicks.

See you around some time, honey.

The langurs, however, like the good primates they are, do have a long, close family life.

The baby langurs spend a lot of time playing and learning from the adults the tricks of

life up in the treetops.