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Published: January 22nd 2007
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...but we made it eventually. Leaving Lumbini mid-morning, we were expecting to arrive at Royal Chitwan National Park by early afternoon. Flow-on from the previous day's bandh made the trip take twice the time it was supposed to however. It seems that anyone with a grievance in the Terai in the current political climate can just set up a roadblock, which is sure to get everyone's attention.
We got as far as the crossroads at Bhairawa, site of some unrest the previous day, when a tractor that had been putting along in front of us suddenly turned across the middle of the road, nose to nose with a similar tractor, and then proceeded to...stay there. Really bad timing as had we got in front of the tractor we would have been fine. A gap between a building and one of the tractors meant that cycle rickshaws, motorbikes, pedestrians and even small cars had no problem getting around the roadblock- it was just the buses and the trucks that couldn't get through.
Okay then, everyone thought, maybe we can go back? No, 100m behind us there was another tractor roadblock, we were trapped. Nothing against us tourists personally, we were
Dugout river crossing
These things are scary just in the wrong place at the wrong time. After about 40 minutes of sitting and wondering if we would be there all day, suddenly the tractor drivers jumped on their vehicles and drove off like nothing had happened.
Our driver had been told that there were similar problems along the road however so he pulled off the tarsealed highway onto some incredibly narrow, bumpy, dusty country roads and we jolted along past mud huts, fields of mustard seed and vegetables, cows, stacks of drying cow dung, small children etc for about an hour and then turned back onto the highway. Cheers went up but much too soon as we started passing a long line of trucks pulled over on the side of the road. We soon found out why- at the head of the queue 3 buses- one with all the windows smashed- had arranged themselves across a bridge so that only pedestrians and bicycles could get around, and there were groups of young guys with big sticks walking around purposefully, sometimes hitting the side of the bus but not really paying too much attention to us.
That didn't look like a place to hang around for
long so it was back on the narrow bumpy roads, along with quite a lot of other traffic, for another 2 hours or so. Occasionally we would be stopped by some kind of makeshift barricade manned by several young guys and our drivers would have to pay some kind of toll to go through- this kind of thing I remember being quite common in the mountains when I was last here trekking, seems to be a common form of fundraising in Nepal. Some of the local people looked quite surprised to see us, and one ting I noticed in this area was that the kids didn't wave and smile like they did in other areas- one boy of about 8 or 9 actually picked up a rock and with excellent timing threw it in a window that was open only about 10cm- luckily Patricia who was sitting behind me was leaning out of her seat having a game of travel Scrabble with the people in the back or it might have hit her.
Finally back on the road again and at last past all the roadblocks we starting winding into the foothills of the Himalayas, which are around 2000m
high. Even this size of mountain appears out of nowhere and soon disappears behind you because of the haze. Back in a lowland area again we passed through several towns- in one there was some kind of festival going on- we were getting a bit nervous of large groups of people by now thinking that there were going to be more demonstrations but these people didn't seem to be disgruntled about anything. At one point a teenager carrying a box of money got on the bus with a box of money and made an impassioned plea to donate money to the new hospital the town was building.
Not much further on there was a group of Maoists, which shows how things in Nepal have changed in just the last few months as previously they were all hiding out in the hills and would have been shot if they'd shown their faces in the towns apparently. Now that they have been included in the peace process it seems like things are different though. I'm sure they can't all be that age but this group of Maoists all looked like they should be in school- the average age was probably 15.
The littlest one
Only 3 weeks old, already weighs more than me They were all in green uniforms with red stars on their caps and at least 2 of them were carrying rifles. We weren't sure what to expect from them but they were all smiling at least and when the driver stopped to see what they wanted they just had a look in and then we continued- no shakedown even as far as I could tell- maybe they were just curious.
Just before sunset we arrived in Chitwan and jumped straight into jeeps, clouds of dust already coming off us after so long on those unsealed roads, to visit the Elephant Breeding Centre. A short jeep trip and a dugout ride across the river later we were there- they seem to be doing very well with the breeding because there were lots of littl'uns. The youngest was 3 weeks old and was so cute- it seemed not quite sure yet what its trunk was for and toddled around waving it in the air before running back to mum.
Toru and I were communing with one of the baby elephants when we noticed everyone else disappearing across the fence suddenly so we followed them, but were too late to see
the tiger someone had spotted, it had already disappeared back into the jungle. The last day in Chitwan Bill kept saying "I can't believe how lucky you guys are, I've never had a group that saw so many rhinos, and you're the first group I've had that's seen a tiger- except you two of course", indicating Toru and me. Next time maybe.
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