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Published: January 1st 2010
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Relaxing by the river
It was nice to chill for a day after Everest!! Today we left Kathmandu by local bus and headed to Chitwan National Park. The roads were appalling, some of them not completed, others with huge potholes (not helped by truck drivers who decided to take a break who would leave their trucks in the middle of the road for people to go round!). I decided not to look out the front window out of fear but Matt could not resist watching the dangerous and crazy overtaking, which involves beeping your horn and overtaking on a blind corner, with another truck coming towards you while talking on your cell phone. At times it was like a crazy game of chicken. Bizarrely, the government leases parts of the road to local landlords who charge motorists what they like but don’t look after the roads. We were lucky to get out of Kathmandu when we did, with a three day general strike and violent protests following a couple of days later.
We arrived safely at Chitwan, this place was very chilled out and quiet being the end of the season. We stayed in a little bungalow just outside the park because all the accommodation inside the park had been closed while the government
decides whether or not it renews the leases. Every morning is elephant bath time where the mahouts encourage tourists (for a small fee) to get in the water with the elephants, jump on their backs, then with a bit of yelling (and a wooden stick) the elephant sprays the person with water and rolls them into the water. Matt and I decided to pass feeling sorry for the poor elephant. We did however see some people actually give the elephant a bath, scrubbing it with a rock - looked like they were in elephant heaven.
We walked through small Tharu villages on the way to the elephant breeding centre. The centre breeds elephants for domestic work. They go out in the park during the day, looking for poachers and injured animals and then return (by themselves) at dusk where they are chained to a post and fed. It was quite disturbing to see the elephants chained and you could see them struggling against the chain to move - the chains were about 2m long, allowing the elephant to turn on the spot and that was about it. Some of the training methods where questionable but apparently WWF is working
with them to try and introduce less harmful training techniques.
One bonus for us was the twin male calf elephants which were free to roam and would come up to us to investigate whether we had any food. They wandered around with the tourists and would let us touch their prickly skin and trunk. They were so cute and super friendly.
15 December - we woke early today for a canoe ride down the misty Rapti River in the hope of spotting some lazy crocodiles or some tigers drinking from the river. The canoe we were in seemed very unstable but we did not fall out. We lucked out on the animal front but did see some beautiful Kingfishers and other birds. We then headed into the park for a safari walk - no tigers here, although who knows, the grass was so high, maybe they were waiting in the bushes! Anyway the closest we got was some fresh tiger markings on the trees! We did see sloth bear tracks (well that’s what the guide said they were!) and a crocodile.
After lunch, we persevered with our aim of seeing a tiger, on an afternoon jeep safari.
No tigers but we did see 3 rhinos and many lazy crocodiles lying in the sun. We visited the garial breeding centre and the poor lonesome tiger who is kept in a barren wooden cage in the middle of the jungle. The tigress’ mother had tormented the village and killed a number of villagers. They shot her (supposedly with tranquiliser) but it killed her, The villagers, bent on revenge then killed the 2 tiger cubs and injured the third, but she was saved to spend the rest of her life in this cage. Apparently because she was fed with human flesh as a cub, she will always be in pursuit of the taste of humans, Not sure if there is any science behind that theory….
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