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Sorry for the long delay..............
Well i guess i'll start off with our rafting trip that was quite a while ago at this point. We booked a 4 day trip for 2 days of rafting and 2 days of canyoning. The trip began straight off of our 3 hour bus ride out of Kathmandu. The buses drove down a very bumpy road nearby some sort of metal factory (I thought they were lost), but this was actually the starting point of our first day on the Bhote Kosi River. For anyone who has ever been white water rafting...I have decided that guides look the same everywhere. Just lighten or darken their skin, change the accent a little and they're all basically the same person. Day 1 of rafting was quite mild, just level 1-2 rapids to ease us in. In addition to the normal commands (right, left, get down, back), however, there was another added. Bounce. Without the monsoon having kicked in yet, the river was quite low and we continuously got stuck on rocks. After which our crazy (but wondeful) guids jumped out of the raft into the river to dislodge our boat and then yelled "BOUNCE" to have us all bob up and down until we floated away. The river took us past very rural Nepali villages, where most people live in mud thatch huts, complete with cows, goats, ducks, chickens, and water buffalos. The villages are situated on terraced farmland and the hills were all completely green and beautiful. Along the way children from these communities would either stand on the bridges and wave us buy(boys) and blow kisses(girls) or jump in the water and swim with all their might to attach themselves to the back of our raft for a quick ride (boys). For those that wouldn't heed our guides warning to let go before we got to the rapids, they found themselves smacked on the head with a paddle. Often times, it seemed that entire communities came out to watch us try and dislodge ourselves off of rocks. I couldn't help but wonder if they sit there thinking "man these strange white men, come out here everday dressed in crazy orange helmets andand keep getting themselves stuck on rocks, then bounce up and down like idiots." We must have looked like huge morons. At one point of the river we all jumped out for a swim, and also got to go to the "jumping rock", for about a 15 foot jump into the freezing water. When I got to the top of the rock I realized what a huge wuss I am because i was terrified to jump. After a minute or two i made myself go, it was really fun but i ended up swallowing some river water... to which the guide said.. ohhhhhh then you take some iodine tablets! and then burst out in laughter. Luckily it didn't make me sick. We also saw monkeys, lots of butterflies, kingfishers (the real birds not the beer!), and these crazy beehives that were long semicircles attached to the underside of a cliff. Apparently some of the honey that results from these hives is actually used as a hallucinogenic and sold for a LOT of money. Day two of rafting was much more exciting as we were on rapids from level 1-4. This day was quite interesting as well. Even in the higher grade rapids the water was still low. As we tried to make it through our second big rapid of the day our boat got perfectly wedged between two rocks. After about 5 minutes of us trying to bounce our way out, our raft started to go under (but still stuck). Our guides response to this was "hmm, what to do?". After a few minutes, while we sat there basically underwater, he yelled "GET ON THE ROCK!!!!!!!!". This is by far my favorite command thus far. I looked around to see which rock he could be talking about, it turned out that he meant that all 7 of us were supposed to get on a rock covered in moss that was about 3x3 feet. Yeah right. I think 3 of us ended up squeezing onto it. From the rock, one by one, a guide on shore threw us the rescue rope and we jumped feet first into the bottom part of the rapid and were pulled to shore. I REALLY wish i had a video of this. It would be top notch youtube material. Jake hadn't been feeling well that day, but he didn't want to miss out on the rafting. A short ways down the river after we reboarded our raft, we took a short break during which he threw up over the side of the boat. He then had to take the rest of the day off trying to sleep on the bus that followed us down the river 😞 (he's better now, thanks to my superior doctoring skills.. and also thanks to cipro and gatorade.)
The place that we stayed at was like a little oasis away from the hustle and bustle and dirt and noise. We stayed in a large tent with comfortable (and clean) beds. The resort is situated right along the river and is full of flowers and butterflies. Lovely. There were other bugs too, but I'll just focus on the good kinds.
Our third day we went canyoning. Canyoning is sort of repelling/sliding/jumping down waterfalls. I found it difficult. Again, the first day was just practice. We climbed up a hill and came down about 6 short falls. The second day was much more exciting, with more water in the waterfalls and higer drops. I personally really suck at canyoning, and often found myself hanging upside down on the side of the cliff wondering what to do and looking helplessly as jake and the guides tried to yell instructions at me. I think I got better..i.e. less scared.. by the end. One of our guides was a tiny, and insanely beautiful Nepali girl named Anu. She is learning to canyon and was brave and came down the falls like it was nothing, so I tried to use her as inpiration. Part way down on the second day I felt something sting/bite my toe (here we go again). It felt like a bee sting but more intense, and I looked down to see a red spider crawling out of my shoe. When we came to the top of the next fall I sat down to examine my toe, but as I took my shoe off Jake noticed that my foot was bleeding. Oh yes, there was a leech stuck to my foot. Upon seeing this i screamed and thrusted my foot into the air yelling " EWWW GET IT OFF!". Jake, being the loving person that he is, patiently tried to flick the leech off my foot, with no success. At this point Anu, my savior, nearly shoved him out of the way, grabbed the leech and threw it to the ground. Then she disappeared and came back with some leaves that she squished together and put the green liquid on my foot (natural medicine) to stop the bleeding. Later as we sat to wait for the guide to set up the ropes for our next decent, I noticed a crazy worm like creature heading towards my foot. I moved. It followed. Luckily I noticed it while it was just entering my shoe. It was half way up my shin before Jake was able to remove it. This, wikipedia later told me, is not a worm at all, but a land leech. Look it up(preferably on video), its disgusting. So, after all the leech drama we made it down 6 drops. I think 3 absailing, one slide, and one absail/jump. The last drop was 45 meters! It was scary, but fun.
Then it was back to Kathmandu for a night and off to a place called Pokhara, a town on lake Pewa Tal.
Day 1 in Pokhara, we rented a scooter and attempted to see some of the local sites. Our first stop was a bat cave. We got lost on the way to the cave, mostly because we asked a woman where it was, parked our scooter because the road was made of large rocks, and followed her 15 minutes through villages and corn feilds to the main road where we had been on in the first place. It turns out we were actually going to the wrong cave because 1 small village discovered a cave in their midst and advertised it on the road as a "bat cave", not the bat cave we were looking for. When we finally found the right cave we were basically forced to not only pay for the ticket, but also a flashlight and a guide. It wasn't until we were inside of the cave that we were informed that actually there are no bats in the bat cave. Don't you know, there aren't any bats during the monsoon. No, we didn't know. We avoided being taken to yet another cave, the "crystal cave", which i'm sure is devoid of crystals as well. Jake was driving the scooter for most of the day (he did an excellent job, I will say, with one minor slip up when we almost ran into the back of a bus), and then made me try to ride. Well, this did not go well. I blame the scooter, I'm sure Jake will have another story entirely. But I almost crashed us into a ditch, and then into a cow, and then into the wrong side of traffic. Later we went to a more secluded road and I practiced by myself, this worked quite well as I cruised along comfortably at about 2 miles per hour. When the road turned bumpy I screamed and let go of the gas. The next day we rented bicycles and road around to the nearby areas. After visiting one of the tourist attractions, Devi Falls, a tiny dirty waterfall filled with plastic bottles, we headed north of town out of the tourist center. This area was really beautiful, along the lake with a lot of small farming houses, and grazing land for horses, cows and buffalo. I wanted to keep going for hours, but Jake reminded me that as far as we rode we also had to ride back, so we turned around. In Pokhara we found an amazing vegetarian Indian restaurant called Punjabi and had 2 meals in a row there. Later that night we went to a play put on by a local elementary school. Romeo and Juliet. The play was about 1 hour long, completely adorable, and funny because most of the time when the kids were delivering the most dramatic, serious, and heartfelt lines of the play we couldn't understand a damn word they were saying.
After the play we were surrounded by 12 year old girls interrogating us on.. just about anything they could think of (sidenote: 12 year old nepali girls are completely in love with Jake, they barely acknowledge my presence when he's around) After being questioned on our favorite music and why jake has a beard and then forced to sing backstreet boys and dance, the girls told us that they use the money from the play to pay for their education (a boarding school called Shamrock established by some Irish guy), which I find pretty amazing.
After Pokhara we were off to Chitwan National Park. The night we got there we went to the elephant breeding center. Enter baby elephants. The mother elephants are actually chained in these sort of stables, but the babies are allowed to wonder because they won't go far from the moms. Imagine my joy when the baby elephants emerged from behind the fence and were just hanging out free for me to approach. I noticed them eating a type of grass growing in the center field, because I am a genius, I decided to pick the grass and feed it to them. (I'll refrain from going on the long rant I already had about how stupid people are, but people are really stupid. the other tourists decided it would be a good idea to surround the babies, feed them people food and plastic wrappers, and massively piss off the mothers who all started to growl and blow dirt all around). Spending time with baby elephants is basically one of my dreams, so it was hard to pull me away, ESPECIALLY when on our way out I found the babiest baby elephant who was breast feeding and just learning to walk. Cutest. Thing. EVER. After about an hour and half, I finally agreed to leave. The next morning we woke up for a canoe float down the Rapti River, a jungle walk, and then a 5 hour jeep safari in the afternoon. On the jungle walk we saw a HUGE rhino hiding in the trees. Another large group of tourists decided to completely disregard the guides and talked loudly whilst also taking flash photography in direct line of this giant male rhino. The rhino started to eye us suspiciously and then it was time to leave. With our walking/jeep safari we saw: rhinos:2, deer:lots, adult wild boar:1, baby wild boar running at top speed in to escape us:12, water snake:1, kingfishers attacking water snake:2, crocodiles: 2, and lots of cool birds and bugs as well. We also later went on an elephant safari where we got about 5 feet from 2 families of rhinos. Unlike with walking or a jeep, animals seem to either not notice the people on top of the elephant and think "hmmm why is this elephant staring at me" , or simply figure that if we're on top of an elephant we're less of a threat.
On a negative note, the treatment of domestic elephants is really atrocious and heart breaking. They are constantly beaten and chained up for a large part of the day. Because of this, Jake and I both decided to forgoe the elephant bathing and really didn't enjoy the elephant safari. I won't go into details, because my sister said she was going to vomit when I told her about it today, but we've both decided to sort of stay away from elephant activities in tourist areas. The tourist elephants, because they are made to do tricks and have to "behave", seem to be treated much worse than the elephants that are just used for farming work. Its hard because people depend on the elephants for their livelihood, but at the same time, the elephants deserve much better.
Our entire stay in Chitwan was HOT, with virtually no electricity. I can honestly say that I don't think Ive ever been that hot or sweaty in my entire life. Last night I went to a cultural show with some people we had met from our hotel. The show had "traditional" Tharu (a group of local people) dancing and was actually pretty good. Jake didn't want to go but was suppose to meet us for dinner, when he didn't show, I figured he had fallen asleep. I came back to near our hotel only to find him having a party with his new Nepali family. A rich family on vacation who has now adopted both of us as their children, swear Jake is the coolest person they have ever met, and invited us to stay in their home whenever we are in Kathmandu. Typical Jake.
Ok, I think I'll end here. Its getting late. Tomorrow we are flying to Kolkata, then to south India on saturday! Hot, hot, hot. At least there will be electricity. Hopefully. Until next time.... Oh, and about the title, our cute little British friends on gap year thought it was hilarious that we actually use any of these terms in real life, they insisted on laughing and repeating everytime we used them. The end.
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naila
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tooooo funny!
im trying to imagine you hanging upside down in the middle of some waterfall. and having leeches and spiders crawling up your leg. ha.