look mom, no hands!

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Ok-

We went to Royal Chitwan National Park, as one of 4 tourists on a tourist bus that may as well have been a government bus, seeing as to make ends meet the driver stopped at every person standing beside the road the whole way there in order to hopefully pull in some passengers. Regardless, it still only took 4 or 5 hours to get there, which was much much faster than we anticipated. When we arrived, we followed the other travellers onto a taxi which brought us to a hotel which was not in the book (even though we promised we would swear by the book) which turned out to be the first mistake.

I am going to try to cut the pissing and moaning down to a small paragraph, so that you can skip it if you want and move on to read about how we rode elephants and how cool it was. The hotel, which claimed to have working showers, had none. The hotel manager (Holiday Jungle Safari Camp) was a total scumbag- he tried to overcharge us for the room and then lied about it, he tried to overcharge us for a safari, and then lied about it, he tried to overcharge us for bus tickets, and then lied about it, and then he tried to refuse us compensation for how badly he'd truly screwed us over, but Jason wasn't having it. Perhaps most remarkably, through it all, Jason kept his cool and got us a discount on the room, cheaper bus tickets and an almost free taxi ride. It was pretty amazing. We still left two days earlier then we planned, ready to write off all of the badness on the fact that tourism is really slow right now and everyone needs to make their buck somehow. Amazingly, I am still willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. Oh, and the food sucked. Now I'm done.

We arrived in the afternoon, had lunch with the 50 Nepali High School students staying at the hotel running around us and screaming and playing out of tune guitars, and headed to the cultural show next door. As touristy as it was, it turned out to be worthwhile. There was some stick dancing, and some fire-spinning, and a man dressed up as a giant and remarkably realistic peacock. Unfortunately, the photos didn't come out so well, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

The photos of the next day, however, are amazing. We got up early for breakfast and watched the elephants have their baths in the river and throw tourists off and completely disregard their keepers and swim away and shoot water all over the place. I tried to get Jason in, but he was hot and cold about the whole thing, so he skipped it and I just took pictures of the other skinny white guy getting assaulted by those unbelievably beautiful animals! After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel for lunch (ahh... vacation) and some sitting around until the elephant safari!

So, we got on an elephant at 4pm, and bumped through the national park for about 1.5 hours, just as the sun was setting. We saw rhinos, some big red bugs, a few crocodiles, a stork, a peacock, and some locals clearcutting parts of the forest. Mostly, we saw the rear ends of the 30 other safari elephants in front of us. Ahh, romantic! No, really, it was pretty great, though we were mostly looking at (and being hit by) trees the whole time. I took a lot of photos, but not nearly as many as I was in. There were 5 or 6 elephants full of elderly Korean tourists who kept snapping shots of Jason and I as we got jostled through the trees.

Even though the crappy food and crappy hospitality kept us from the baby elephant sanctuary (can you think of anything potentially cuter?), we had a good time. I doubt we'll be back anytime soon, but Dad! I rode an elephant for you!

Check out new photos on old blogs!

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Photos

feet
our feet. elephant butt. very cool.

Look at the wildlife!
Evidently I am way more interesting than WILD RHINO....

Whee!
this guy was having fun... for the first 20 minutes.

Rhinos
are cooler when not in jars...

Comments

[Corie]

Dirty Feet.
About mum's comment on your barefoot teaching. 1- isn't it cold and shouldn't you at least be wearing sandals? And 2- can't you like clean your feet? I can see four months of built up dirt all the way from Denver..

[Dad]

Looking good
You look like a whole new Sara, all sleek and everything. How is it that you need a vacation from a vacation? Thanks for riding an elephant for me. looks like a pretty cool experience, were there an baby elephants? Keep having fun, but remember we miss you and you should come home at some point. Lots of live, dad.

[Ruins_Explorer]

rhinos!
I didn't know that there were rhinos in that part of the world!