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Published: January 6th 2010
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It was tough leaving Pokhara. We’d just gotten so damn used to doing not much and eating chocolate and steak everyday that the thought of not doing that was really hard to bear! A couple of days before Christmas our guest house had managed to arrange for our bag, which we’d left in Kathmandu, to be delivered to us. That saved us about two days of travel time and 20 quid from not having to go and get it ourselves. So we re-sorted all our crap back into two bags and headed off on Boxing Day - first stop south, to Tanzen. We reckon the guy from Lonely Planet who did the write-up for this place must have been high at the time. We were promised an ancient sprawling town or something equally as magnificent and we got there and it was as dead as a doornail. The hotels were a rip off, there were weirdos in the streets and the only decent restaurant was a chain that couldn’t even get Dhal Bhat right. Saying that though, we arrived at about 5pm… and we left at 7 that next morning. Maybe it’s one of those places that grows on you. Maybe
we were being precious Pokhara princesses.
Next stop: Lumbini. The birth place of Da Bud-Man. Ahem… I mean Buddha. We’re feeling really familiar by this stage, you see. Lumbini is a pretty crappy place and clearly the Bud-Momma was desperate cause there aint no way I’d want to stick around long enough to drop any sort of load here, especially a baby. However, once you get inside the sacred complex it’s actually really lovely. You can go and see the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha got borned and there a couple of shrines there dating back to around 200 B.C which makes Jesus look like a spring chicken embryo. From there you can explore the property on a bike going to look at Buddhist temples built on plots of land issued to monasteries from around the world. We even saw Burma’s Golden Temple, a mini replica of Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon which brought back some happy memories.
That evening we bought a taxi ride and a bus ticket to Chitwan National Park from the Lumbini Village Hotel which was recommended in the book but we got totally rorted. The next morning they stuck us on a public
bus instead of a private bus and we paid R. 350 each but had we done it ourselves it would have been more like R. 100. Bastards. Anyway, we got there, unharmed, and found a hotel called Chillax. And when you stay there, you have no choice but to. By this stage we hadn’t showered in about 3 days so we were desperate for a descent shower and were prepared to part with a bit of cash for it. When we arrived the owner looked like he was asleep with his feet up on his motor bike and his aviators on. He said there was no room ready but if we wanted we could go for a walk and come back in an hour. He also showed us a big metal drum that was planted on top of a camp fire which he assured us produced the best hot showers in the world. The price of the room was about a half to a third the price of anywhere else so we doubtfully conceded to stay.
We really lucked out with the day we arrived in Chitwan because it was the final day of the 2009 Elephant Races! We
headed straight for the race ground and found that although the races were over they were just about to begin Elephant Football! Yee-hah! That was very cool. There were loads of people all gathered round and stalls selling amazing food and a really great vibe. At the end of the game you could go up and pat the players and I gave one of them some of my left over peanuts from the bus. He took them so gently from my hand! Then two tiny elephants came out and started walking amongst the crowd. They are such gentle and placid animals. I never realized how really beautiful they are. That evening we got back home, had a couple of Everest’s and one of the best hot showers in the world. No lie.
Chitwan is apparently one of the best national parks in Asia to see animals like tigers and deer and elephants but the real stars of the show are the Rhinos. We spoke to some other people in our hotel who’d been on a tour of the jungle over two days and they said they saw heaps so we booked in a one hour canoe ride, a two
hours jungle walk, a 3 hours jeep safari and an elephant ride. We were feelin lucky, punks.
Anyway, as the story goes, the canoe ride rendered a kingfisher or two, on the walk we caught a glimpse of something that may or may not have been the top of a crocodile, the jeep took us to a crocodile farm where we also saw Chitwan's famous man-eating tiger that was locked in a very small enclosure until the end of his days, and the elephant ride… well… we saw a wild boar, a wild chicken and a deer who couldn’t have cared less whether we were there or not. No Rhino. Tom was weely weely cwankwy. The ride was at 6.30am and we had a 9.30 bus to catch and when we got on the bus we got to hear EVERYONES stories about how they saw SO MANY RHINOS!! WOWEE RHINOS COMING OUT OF EVERYONES AR…. blah blah. Ever the pessimist, I wasn’t ever really convinced that we'd see anything but it took Thomas a good 5 hours all the way to Kathmandu to get over it. Bless.
We’ve got about a week in Kathmandu before we head on
from here. Next stop CHINA! Panda central! Screw you, Rhinos!
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