Chitwan: Days Forty Five to Seven

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Chitwan is beautiful; far more tropical than I expected Nepal to be. We got in very late at night the first day and crossing the border into Nepal was surreal; on the Indian side everything was exploding (it was Diwali, so only fireworks), people were hassling you for money and everything was totally chaotic. Going into Nepal was like everything had suddenly been switched off.

The first day we had a village tour, followed by swimming with elephants. The elephants seemed very keen to sit down and dump us in the water, which goes to show they have a sense of humour. And so did we when, coming back from a walk through the jungle, we saw a crocodile metres from where we'd been swimming.

That night we had a stick dance, where the cheap Nepalese alcohol got the better of some of us us and we ended up practicing martial arts with a very large, very hard stick. Fortunately no one got hurt and we all had fun.

The next day it was an elephant safari, which will not be heavily describved as my credit is running out. Suffice to say that elephants are incredibly graceful.

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