Advertisement
Published: January 30th 2013
Edit Blog Post
J:
I was reunited with the travelling party at Kathmandu Guest House, and in the weeks I'd been trekking they had sussed their way around the city so they spent a few days taking me to a few of their many new favourite cafes, restaurants and bars. I had my first masala tea - a milky, super-sweet and addictive chai - and absorbed the news I'd missed. Not least of which was the revelation that half our travelling group had decided to stay and live in Kathmandu.
Kathmandu is wild. Traversing the city involves avoiding people, bikes, rickshaws and cars on pavementless, potholed roads whilst being aggressively offered goods, tours and drugs and steering clear of the odd buffalo, roadside fire, glue-sniffing child or person defecating on the street. We later met an American guy who usually lives in India and had come to Kathmandu to relax and escape the mayhem, so god only knows how chaotic India is going to be.
Kathmandu nightlife is not wild though. We tried to have a night out celebrating our reunion and hit the town at 9pm on Friday to find that bars were already winding down and nothing was open
beyond 11pm.
One thing we found in Kathmandu is that the city operates with regular, scheduled power cuts as electricity supply can't keep up with demand. I found the phenomena, called Load Shedding, surprising in a capital city with a population of over a million people considering we've been to many more isolated and poorer areas with uninterrupted supply. It's impressive that most shops & restaurants are able to open 'business as usual' under the trying circumstances.
After a few days in the capital we headed south-west to Chitwan National Park on the sort of bus which keeps Nepali chiropractors in high demand. To get our bearings on the first evening our guide took walked us through the grasslands and we were lucky enough to see a wild rhino grazing in the river.
We had heard that the best way to see the local fauna is on top of an elephant as they are quieter and less alien than a 4WD and mask the scent of humans so allow us to get much closer than otherwise possible. Riding atop an elephant is a humbling and exhilarating experience if not particularly comfortable. The sheer brute strength to carry
five adults up and down muddy paths and wade through shallow rivers was impressive, it it allowed us to get within spitting distance of startled deer, monkeys and peacocks.
Afterwards we took the elephants to the river to bathe them. Well, more accurately our elephant took us to the river to bathe us in river water sprayed from her trunk. After a few minutes our mahout got our elephant to kneel in the water for a more thorough soak, at which point she lost her balance and dropped Hannah, Dana and myself overboard into the river on top of freshly laid dung.
Feeling freshly cleansed from our elephant bathing, we got into a canoe to explore the aquatic wildlife of the park. Mostly we saw birds, which mostly I didn't recognise although we did see a kingfisher. The highlight of the boat ride was floating past a couple of crocodiles snapping away at each other in an apparent tussle for territory. The loser of this battle retreated underwater and swam underneath our canoe and resurfaced to snap at us before making his way onwards. We moored the boat and jumped ashore for the next leg of the safari.
Chitwan is relatively rare in modern big game parks in that you can still explore it on foot. Our guide gave us a quick safety briefing which alarmed us as Nepal's motto isn't usually 'safety first' and such precautions had been hitherto unheard of. The gist of the advice was what we should do if we encounter a rhino ('climb the nearest big tree'😉, bengal tiger ('maintain eye contact, back away slowly'😉 or bear ('run for your life'😉. It wasn't fully explained what we should do if we encounter all of these at once though. In the event we didn't see any of the above so our guide livened the walk up by springing out at us causing startled jumps, shrieks and a few tears amongst the group.
After another molar loosening bus journey we arrived next in Pokhara, an attractive small town built on the side of a lake nestled in the foothills of the Annapurna mountain range. Dana celebrated a birthday here so Dana, Timo and I indulged in a parahawking flight over Fewa lake. Parahawking involves feeding birds of prey whilst paragliding several hundred metres above the ground. The theory is that both paragliders and
hawks use rising air currents, or thermals, to stay airborne as efficiently as possible. Birds of prey, in this case an Egyptian Vulture called Bob, have vastly superior eyesight to humans and can see dust and insects swept upwards in thermals so locate them better than paragliders can. To reward Bob for guiding us to the best thermals I fed him scraps of buffalo meat. Watching Bob's speed and agility when grabbing the meat delicately from my hand in often strong winds filled me with childlike happiness.
In the evening our hostel laid on a traditional Nepali night of food, drink and music for Dana's birthday having been impressively arranged from afar by her boyfriend. We ate Daal Baht, drank wine and beer, listened to what felt like the same song on repeat for five hours and finished with cake. A great day all round.
Nepal has been a wonderful country, with diverse landscape from wild Kathmandu, to the african savanah plains of Chitwan and the huge mountain ranges of Everest region. The people have been open and friendly (with the exception of a particular child who first made a half-hearted and ultimately fruitless attempt to mug juggling
balls from me then later tried with more success to coerce two stray dogs to fight). There's no better reflection of our time here than the fact that we've stayed two weeks longer than planned and are only going because our visa is expiring, and three of our group are staying on.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.114s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 9; qc: 61; dbt: 0.0571s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb