Advertisement
May 30-June 1
After returning to Kathmandu, I tried to sort out my visa for China. I realized that I had scheduled my flight so that I had 32 days in China instead of 30 and I wasn't sure if I could get a visa for that time period. So instead of trying to get the visa myself, I decided to get Himalyan Glacier trekking to help as they had assured me that they could get my visa in one day. After talking to them, we agreed that I would come early the next morning and they would go to the Chinese Embassy with me to get my visa. But when I showed up the next day, the Chinese Embassy was closed for a holiday. Being Friday, that meant that I would have to wait till Monday to get my visa. I knew that I would be cutting it close, but I decided to head down to Chitwan National Park area for a few days rather than wait around in Kathmandu. In theory, as long as the Chinese Embassy was open on Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week, I should be able to get my visa in time for
my flight.
Chitwan National Park is located in the southern part of Nepal. I stayed at the Travelers Jungle Lodge, which is not in the jungle but in Sauraha, small town near the wild areas of the park. The afternoon I arrived, Som (my guide from the lodge) took me on a short walk to see some of the Tharu peoples’ dwellings. The Tharu are the traditional residents of the area. Many of them still live traditional one and two-story houses. The walls of the houses are made of reeds covered with a mixture of clay and dung and have thatched roofs of elephant grass. Amazingly, the mud mixtures does not wash off the walls during the monsoon. Many of the houses now have corrugated sheet steel roofs instead, but many people prefer the thatched roofs as they are much quieter in the rain. The thatched roofs are, however, rather labor intensive, requiring replacement every year which in turn requires trips into the park to gather elephant grass.
In the evening, the tourists were treated to a Tharu cultural show consisting of a series of traditional dances. The most impressive was the first dance of the night, the
stick dance. In this dance, roughly 20 Tharu young men formed a giant ring on stage. As the ring rotated, the men would swing sticks at each other, the swinging choreographed so that their sticks would collide yielding a percussive sound. As the dance progressed, the patterns of movement and stick swinging grew ever more complex. Given how fast they were swinging the sticks, I'm amazed that at least one of them didn't acquire a concussion that evening!
That night, it rained most of the night, and as I lay in bed sleepless from the deafening sound of torrential rain hitting the steel roof, I wondered if some of the following day's activities might be cancelled. Sure enough, the jeep ride deep into the jungle was cancelled due to muddy trails, but the rest of the day's activities were still on.
After breakfast, Som took me for a canoe ride followed by a jungle walk. The sky was still cloudy, so it was nice and cool. The canoe consisted of a 25 foot dug out canoe constructed from a single log. The canoe was very narrow and was propelled using a pole by a pilot standing on the
stern of the boat. How he managed to stand there and not fall in or tip the canoe over was beyond me. But while the canoe was rather tippy, it did have good secondary stability. The canoe ride lasted about 1/2 an hour and we saw birds (king fishers, egrets, cranes), 3 crocodiles, spotted deer and barking deer.
The canoe dropped us off and then Som lead me through the forest pointing out various plants. At one point we came upon a troupe of macaque monkeys. I couldn't get very close to them before they would take off running. We also passed several termites mounds. The mounds were light brown, vertically sculpted towers some over 1 meter high. Som broke one of them open and I got a view of the intricate passages and chambers with termites scurrying about. According to Som, the termites would repair the broken part of the mound over several weeks.
After the jungle walk, we went to the elephant breeding center. The elephants in the park are all Asian elephants. We saw a pair of twin baby elephants which is apparently quite rare. Most of the elephants were chained by their feet to
a post under an open pavilion. A couple of young elephants, maybe 4 feet tall were wandering around loose. They would come up to the tourists, sniffing the tourists' hands for cookies or other treats, then wander off if they didn't get anything. They were very cute.
After elephant breeding center, we returned to the hotel. After a quick lunch, it was time for the elephant bathing. An elephant handler brought an elephant to the hotel and I climbed onto the elephant's back. The elephant was lead, with me riding bare back, down to the river for a bath. Riding an elephant bare back was pretty fun. The elephant's skin on the back and head was thick and rough with sparse, thick, black hair on the back of her head. At the river, the handler would order the elephant to flop over on its side while I clung to the elephant's back trying not to fall off. Then the elephant would stand up and the handler would order the elephant to suck up water into its trunk and spray the water over its head and onto me. What a blast!
Later in the afternoon, I took an elephant
ride into the jungle. A wooden platform was placed on the back of the elephant and myself and three folks from the UK piled on. It wasn't the most comfortable ride, but we were able to get incredibly close to the wildlife without spooking it. We approached two adult single-horn rhinoceroses and their two babies to the point that they were close enough to spit on. Likewise, we could approach the monkeys and deer within twenty feet and they wouldn't be spooked. For whatever reason, 5 humans aren't a threat if they are piled on the back of an elephant.
The following day, I was originally supposed to do some bird watching in the morning and then I was to return by bus to Kathmandu. But the Newari decided to strike in Kathmandu and all bus service was cancelled. This actually turned out to be a good thing because I got to take the jeep tour that had been cancelled the day before due to the rain.
The bird watching wasn't very exciting. Som just lead me around the town and down by the river naming the various birds we saw. But on the way back, we stopped
at the elephant breeding center again. There we saw one of the elephant handlers making a giant vitamin pills to give to the elephants. The handler would take bunch of elephant grass and fashion a depression in the middle of the elephant grass. Into the depression he would put a mixture of grain, brown sugar/molasses, and rock salt. He would then fold the grass over the depression and tie it closed forming a giant pill. He would make and feed more than 20 of the pills to the elephant in a single day; a lot of work. The handlers have a hard, dangerous job working with elephants, but the job comes with a relatively good government retirement.
In the afternoon, we went on the jeep tour. Six of us piled into the back of an old, beat up jeep and took off into the jungle and grass lands. After a brief bit of forest, the dirt road went through elephant grass that was over our heads, so we couldn't really see anything. After 1/2 an hour of driving, we moved into shorter elephant grass and more trees. We saw the occasional deer and monkey and not much else.
After about 2 hours, we got to the gharial crocodile breeding center. Chitwan has two species of crocodiles; marsh muggers and gharials. The marsh muggers look like more traditional crocodiles and like to take down large prey, including people. The gharials have long, thin, snaggle toothed snouts and predominantly feed on fish. The breeding center had gharials and turtles. We were able to wander around the breeding enclosures looking at the different aged gharials. The 30 year old gharials were huge, maybe 12 feet tail to snout. After looking at the gharials, our guide lead us to a high wooden enclosure with a 6 year old Bengal tiger inside. The tiger's mother had killed a villager when the tiger was just a cub, and so they had to capture the mother and two cubs and put them in captivity so that the mother would not kill any more people. The mother and one of the cubs had died, and we were now looking at the remaining cub. The tiger was a beautiful animal, but didn't seem to be too pleased to have us looking at it as it started pacing around while we watched and at one point jumped up
against the wall where we were standing outside. I would hate to meet one of these tigers on my own in the tall elephant grass.
After looking at the tiger, we took the jeep back to the river. The return trip turned out to be pretty exciting. Being later in the day and cooler, we saw more animals out and about including peacocks (peacocks can fly! Who knew?!), langur monkeys, a one horned rhino on the opposite bank of the river, an elephant, and wild boar. The other bit of excitement was that we kept getting stuck in the mud. Turned out that our jeep had bald tires and only semi-functional four wheel drive. We had to get out several times to push, and by the time we were back I was covered from the knees down with mud. But it was kinda fun too.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.11s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 8; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0432s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Dipendra Sharma
non-member comment
It was awesome !
It was really awesome to read about the visit to "Chitwan Sauraha" the words are beautiful. Being a Nepalese I havent visited the National Park and when reading the article written by a guest makes me feel as if I was with him and having the live experience. And this time in my vaccation I will be going to Chitwan National park. sincerely Dipendra Dubai - Festival city