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Published: January 15th 2013
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Swoooon!
The baby elephant melts our hearts! Chitwan National Park is in south west of Kathmandu, down near the border with India. We organised a package deal with the help of the best haggler in all of Nepal (Thanks John) and spent 2 nights and 3 days in the park. After a 6 hour bus ride down the worlds worst road (I think we travelled about 100km in 6 hours!) we arrived at Chitwan. The first place we visited an Elephant Sanctuary which was really quite depressing, truth be told. Our visit was just before sunset, which we were told was just after the elephants were all brought back in to from the jungle for the night. The view we had of the place was a whole bunch of elephants with their two front legs chained together rocking back and forth and clearly distressed. Apparently they are only chained like that during the night, and in the morning they are taken out into the jungle for the day. Our guide was telling us that they only looked distressed because they were impatient for a sweet treat that they were usually fed at that time, but it still looked pretty sad to me.
The next morning
we boarded a little wooden canoe for a row up the river and into the National Park. Abe was a bit disappointed not to spot any crocodiles in the river (I know…crazy man). There wasn't much to the canoes and I was definitely more keen to spot crocs from a safe distance! After about an hour in the canoes, we disembarked at the riverside to walk back to camp through the park. We spotted a lot of monkeys and crocs and even saw a tiger print! But the most impressive sight was the gorgeous, fat rhino! We got within about 25m of the massive creature and it was amazing! On our walk back we also stopped into the Elephant Breeding Park, which was a bit more of the same sad stuff, elephants with their feet chained together not able to move about. On the bright side, the babies were not chained up and one wandered over to the fence and we got to pat it! Definitely a highlight of our time at the park.
The next morning we went on an elephant safari (By this stage I was a bit disheartened by the whole elephant situation) but
Pagoda, anyone?
Bhaktapur's beautiful Durbar Square I supposed that an elephant walking around with us on its back was marginally better than an elephant chained up and unable to move. It was a very uncomfortable ride, but we did get to see some more rhinos out in the jungle, which was very amazing indeed.
With a few more days up our sleeves and thinking we'd seen just about enough of Kathmandu, we decided to get out of the city and see some of the villages. We also thought we'd have out first experience 'winging it' i.e., not booking accommodation in advance. We'd manage to stumble across a Nepal Lonely Planet in one of the guesthouses we'd stayed in so had a bit of an idea of the towns we wanted to explore and where we could go looking for beds. We hopped on a local bus out to Bhaktapur, about 20km from Kathmandu and the home to a very gorgeous Durbar Square. We described Bhaktapur as 'a nicer quieter version of Kathmandu'. The buildings in the square were extraordinary and they had banned cars in the main area so there was much less hustle and bustle.
After a lovely day
So which one is Everest?
See that tiny peak? Riiiiiight over there? exploring the old town, we hopped on the local bus to Nargakot, up in the hills. Nargakot is renowned for its majestic views of the Eastern mountain ranges (including 'glimpses' of Everest). We found a lovely place to stay right up in the hills and after a surprisingly delicious lunch we went on the long walk up to the viewpoint (about 5km). Unfortunately it was a bit of a hazy day, but we still had a breathtaking view of the Eastern Himalaya. Abe, the avid photographer, was keen to rise for the sunrise view of the ranges. After much grumbling from me, we set off in the dark for a great place to view the sunrise. The best vantage point we found was from a construction site, however I was more entertained by the antics of the two dogs in the guesthouse below, much to Abe's disgust.
On our return to Kathmandu, we finished off a little Christmas present shopping and prepared for our flight to Delhi!
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