Indian kids

Apologies if this offends anyone (e.g., my future children), but I think Indian kids—we're talking ages 2 to 10—are cuter than American kids. (For that matter, Asian babies, with their chubby faces, win the baby contest.) Check out these photos I took in northern India. How can you not agree?

One-horned rhino hunting

Well, not hunting. But it sure felt like a throwback to India's colonial days, riding atop an elephant through eight-foot grasses at dawn in pursuit of a rhino. All I was missing was a big white mustache.

Khaziranga National Park in northeast India—the bulbous part of the country surrounded by Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, and China—is tough to get to but worth the visit. From Delhi, I took a 3-hour flight, an 8-hour train, and a 4-hour bus. Planes, trains, and automobiles. The rhinos, with their charcoal plated armor and articulated rib bones, look as close as anything to prehistoric. They grunt and stomp and charge, even overturn a safari jeep or two when they get the urge. That one horn packs a punch.

Himalayan desert camels

In north India, furry spitting two-humped camels brought from the Silk Road live in a high-altitude desert at 10,000 feet. They strut across the sand as clouds dip and swirl above them, the Hamalayas rising above the horizon line like stony snow-capped monoliths.