"going to" definition, does it imply intent?

In the question/game/riddle, "going to" does not indicate an intent. It indicates that the subject(s) was(were) moving towards the river, whether that were their intent or not. (I assume you are referring to the tortoises - they are going to the river.

(We can say 1 rabbit is going to the river. ("while going to the river" is a free modifier - it is adverbial modifying "1 rabbit saw 9 elephants": it is not adjectival. It can be rephrased as "While going to the river, one rabbit saw 9 elephants.")

As there is no information about the elephants, we cannot assume that they were going to the river.

We can say 3 monkeys are going to the river. (The elephants saw them doing this.)

There are 6 tortoises that are going to the river - even though they have no choice.

There are 10 animals going to the river.)

I don't believe the intent matters in this question. Let's say we replace "to" with "towards". The tortoises are still moving towards the river, and if that's where the monkeys are going, that is where they will also end up. I'm more interested in this question, however. 1 rabbit sees 9 elephants on the way to the river, and each elephant sees 3 monkeys. Does that mean all of the elephants see the same 3 monkeys? Or is it 3 different monkeys each? And each monkey has 2 tortoises. The way it is written implies that their is 1 rabbit, 27 monkeys and 54 tortoises. The elephants just saw the mokeys going to the river, they did not go themselves. My answer would be 82.