Elephants in Nepal helped rescue hundreds of tourists from a flooded safari park and nearby hotels Monday as flash floods and landslides swept the area.
The Rapti River in Sauraha 50 miles south of Kathmandu overflowed its banks and stranded about 600 tourists at the Chitwan National Park. Three hundred guests were carried by the elephants and tractor trailers to Bharatpur on Sunday and the rest were rescued Monday, Reuters reported.
Four days of heavy rain caused flash floods and landslides that killed 70 people in Nepal as of Monday, Reuters said. Twenty-six of Nepal’s 75 districts were underwater or had had landslides Monday. The northeast Indian state of Assam also was flooded, with 2.3 million people being displaced between the two areas and at least 15 killed.
Almost 90 percent of Kaziranga National Park in Assam was underwater as of Monday, according to Forest Minister Pramilla Rani Brahma, forcing the animals — including endangered one-horned rhinoceros, to move to higher ground, Reuters reported.
Information and Communications Minister Mohan Bahadur Basnet said at least 60,000 homes were completely underwater, including farmlands that supply food to many in Nepal and elsewhere, International Business Times reported.
“The heavy rains hit at one of the worst times, shortly after the farmers planted their rice crop in the country’s most important agricultural region,” Sumnima Shrestha of Heifer International said, IBT reported.
“We are mobilizing all the resources we have to ensure that everyone is safe,” Chief District Officer of Chitwan Narayan Prasad Bhatta told the BBC.