Elephants, Rhinos & Crocodiles, Oh My!

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Sunday 2-27 to Tuesday 3-1
Off to another Nepali World Heritage Sight – this one, a natural one. (Sadly) We left Tiffany in Hetauda and headed toward Chitwan National Park, where I immediately started coughing and sneezing. Turns out, it’s controlled burn season in Chitwan and a lot of the forest was smoldering while we were there, so the sky was raining ash and it drove my sinuses nuts. Nick found us a beautiful bungalow hotel right along the river and we had an endless supply of fresh, hot, absolutely delicious Nepali tea whenever we wanted it! Seriously, this was amazingly good tea! No offense Thailand; I love you and I love your thai iced tea, but this was even better, if that can be believed!

OK, enough about food. Chitwan was pretty and the town of Sauraha was very quaint. Amazingly, there was absolutely no litter on the ground like everywhere else in Nepal. When we asked about this, we were told it was a conscious effort on the part of the hotels in town to make the place look nice for incoming tourists. Too bad more of Nepal doesn’t benefit as well from this idea. Our first day in Chitwan was spent on a cultural excursion. We visited a local Tharu village and watched a traditional dance show with peacock costumes and flaming swords! Interestingly, the female parts to dances are performed by men; not only were they in women’s clothes, but they stuffed bras as well. Not expecting that one.

The next couple days at Chitwan were spent on various safaris. We took an elephant ride (shame of all shames – it felt terrible and the sound of the cane hitting the elephants just brought me to tears) into the buffer zone around the forest and were able to see wild deer, monkeys, peacocks and RHINOCEROSES! It was the first time I’ve ever seen a wild rhino and we got to see two of them – a mom and a baby. We had quite a bit of luck (thanks Ganesh) seeing animals in Chitwan. While we didn’t see any tigers (Chitwan is home to 125 out of the 155 or so in all of Nepal), we did see evidence of them – fresh scat and foot prints. We went on a couple hikes and got to see TWO different species of owls! They were so little and cute!!! After bird watching, we passed by a herd of elephants and their mahouts headed into the forest. The herd contained the first ever twin baby elephants born in captivity in Nepal (twins are a blessing!); they were so cute and playful, it was ridiculous (their skin was soooo unbelievably soft!). I had a small banana in my bag that I tried to give to them but they were so impatient. They slobbered all over me trying to reach into my bag to get it. Once out, they both pushed and shoved to try and get the one little piece of fruit. One of the twins even kicked the other one in the face to push him out of the way; the other one turned around and head butted him in the derriere. [Nick Note: They reminded me of Sing and Song, the twins we met in Vietnam. Now I know why we had to make sure when we got something for them, each one got exactly the same thing; or else it would be a Saigon street brawl.] It was a riot to watch! Later on, we got to help bathe one of the adult elephants and it was funny watching us fall off the elephant into the water, trying to stay on and not get squashed as it rolled around in the river.

We also took a jeep ride into the forest and saw first hand some of the burning, as well as some illegal wood collecting by the local Tharus. There were police roaming the park but apparently illegal logging wasn’t a concern of theirs, sadly. We did get to visit a gharial (endangered crocodile) breeding center and see another rhino in the park but we had a terrible driver who, as soon as the giant herbivore started grazing close to our jeep, freaked out that it was going to ram the car (which it wasn’t, it was eating!) and drove away. What the hell?! That’s what a safari’s for – to see animals in the wild! You don’t drive away when you get a good view of one! Stupid driver.

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