Asian Elephant

The Asian elephant is distributed across the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, from India in the west to Borneo in the east, with Nepal at the northern edge of its range. In Nepal's Bardia National Park, a bull known as Raja Gaj was estimated at 3.4m at the shoulder and counted among the biggest Asian bulls recorded (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is herbivorous, eating about 150kg of vegetation a day, and wild animals live to about 60 years. In the eastern Himalaya of north-east India elephants regularly move above 3,000m in summer at a few sites, though that is not a Nepal record. Nationally Endangered (Nepal National Red List 2011).