finish closing noose

The days after passed similarly. The forest is as thick as ever.  wildlife is abundant which ever direction they looked in.

Sometimes flowers were just that , flowers.  yet some other times it was  deadly insects parading  as innocent flowers.

The caravan got fairly used to the commands halt, single file , hold hands , three abreast so on and so forth. 

Finally , after five days of slogging through they reached a village. It's a pretty big village. 

The houses are built atop little hills. A river ran around all over the village . Fields lined all around the river in two directions. 

Jiushu asked the village chief and camped inside the village. They made rabbit stew and roast venison as per their norm when stopping for the night. 

They exchanged meat with villagers for honey and fruits. 

Here, for the first time Jiushu has seen elephants as cattle. They seem to be doing quite well.