A report in the Christianpost dated May 9, 2013, talks about an incident in which the former river guide Paul Templer was swallowed by a hippopotamus while he was touring down the Zimbabwe’s Zambezi River near Victoria Falls.
Paul Templer was 27-year-old when this incident occurred on that March day in 1996. He was doing his work of taking tourists down the Zambezi River.
He told his near-death story to the Guardian, and since then it has become viral online. According to Templer, he knew the hippo who tried to kill him as a "grouchy old two-ton bull". He was aware of the stories of people being killed by the hippos.
Templer went inside the hippo straight down his throat. In an interview with the Tribune, he stated, “It smelled like death."
While recalling the incident, he also added, "There was a terrible, sulphurous smell, like rotten eggs, and a tremendous pressure against my chest."
Luckily, the hippo bit into his lungs, and missed the heart, kidneys and liver.
He recalls the moment by telling that it was dark, and he realized that he had been swallowed up by the hippo.
He was carrying a .357-caliber Magnum firearm, but he didn’t get any chance to use it.
Suddenly, when the hippo loosened up its grip, Templer found the chance to come out of its clutches. He looked up through 10 feet of water with different hues reflecting under the sun.
Somehow he managed to reach the shore and save himself. He underwent surgery for deep wounds.
In a YouTube video titled "A Bad Day at the Office” he mentions, "Out there in the wild, we were the intruders."
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