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Published: April 29th 2009
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Yummy pizza!
After the colouring from the holy man We left Kathmandu to Chitwan National Park the day after the famous Holy Day, a celebration that can be kind of compared to what in other parts of the world would be “carnival celebrations” . The people play with water and colours, and everything is permitted! We came out of the hotel and got splashed with water balloons as soon as we walked 10 meters! People were already on every roof top with their hands full of water balloons. Then we got coloured from a local shaman and afterwards we made it back to the hotel to have our own little celebration with pizza and drinks on the terrace of the guest house where we were staying!
So we took the early morning bus to Chitwan National Park. Passing for the third time through the same road, and this time was the winner! We got given a nice lunch at a hotel in the near by town, and then a jeep took us to the park.
The place we were going to is called “Island Jungle Resort”, and it was a bit expensive, but since it was our last chance to see any kind of big wild animal, we didn’t
take any chances.
On our way to the resort we passed through a local village, and there found out that the Holy Day celebrations were still on for a longer period than we thought. The jeep had to stop several times for the local kids to paint our faces with different colours of powder! It was funny and we kept our colour on the hole day just to be true to the locals!
The resort was perfect. Located on a small island surrounded by a delta formation of the Narayani river. The resort has a restaurant, a bar with river view, bungalows with river view, 5 elephants, and very helpful staff: perfect!
Of course, past experiences told us that despite all of that we were probably going to see only a giant sparrow or something rather, but the place itself makes you feel like you are in a Daktari island, so we felt satisfied instantly. The pamphlet promoting the resort was selling guarantied rhino sights, crocodile sights and deer sights (only if you were lucky, offcourse) so we were happy if were able to even see 300 meters far away shade of a rhino. Specially if we got to
Holy Day colours 1
they really enjoy couloring tourists! see it from on the back of an elephant!
So it was an amazing surprise that, after only 10 min of riding on the back of an elephant, I spotted two very big gray shades only 3 meters away from where we were! Rhinos! I screamed. All cameras pointed at once, like a group of professional hunters! The guide directed the elephant we were on towards the couple of rhinos, and started to call to the other groups, when the rhinos got scared (well, how could blame them, if I were to be lurked by an elephant at lunch time I would certainly run away as well!) Then our guide did the unthinkable for an ecological freak… It went through the jungle. Like a knife through butter, we cut down trees on our way to find the rhinos! Crossing the jungle on the back of an elephant has to be one for the top ten of my life! It was incredible! Finally, the other groups caught up, but the rhinos got away by then.
We saw rhinos! Everything else was superfluous… We saw rhinos!
That night the group were discussing there adventures on other reserves and sanctuaries. Most
Holy Day colours 2
They reached the driver the most! of them had already been to some sanctuaries in India and, to our not so well hiden envy, almost all of them saw tigers in India! But, never the less, everybody found the rhinos sight impressive. That night we slept tight, to the sound of the jungle (including what we thought was a chicken that decided to camp on our roof!)
The next morning was elephant safari again! We went through another part of the island, this time, certainly that we weren’t going to see nothing much. But we did again! Another rhino! And this time the expert guides managed to surround it and we got the chance to empty our cameras on them! Lucky for us, the rhino kept on eating after a first fright, so we could take the time to do all the photos we could possibly want. We left the rhino (who appeared to have seen other tourist in his life because he didn’t even flinch when we finally left), and on the way back we spotted several types of dear.
That afternoon we went crocodile hunting. Now there I was very sceptic. We already had crossed the river on our way to resort
Proud of our colours
Us and the driver coloured and there wasn’t any crocodile to be seen around (luckily, because the canoe we crossed on was very low!) But again Island Jungle Resort delivered! We saw two types of crocodiles! Even the mugger crocodile of India! (The one with the small long nose) We also spotted some birds that some of the people in the group got excited on, but did little to our already over excited state.
Later the same day we went bird watching. Yeah… birds… eh… not my cup of tea… We didn’t even have binoculars so we didn’t see much. The highlights for that day were some more deer and the foot print of a tiger (that was three months old, and dried up, so no worries) and a pile of rhino poo (apparently they all only go number two’s in one place)
After dinner they told us that there was going to be a small walk around the resort to see the elephants sleep, because the planned walk for the next morning was not going to be possible. The walk was short, as announced. The elephants were actually having dinner (late dinner) and they were quiet awake but the walk through the
jungle at night was fun.
The next morning it was tourist smuggling time! The strike was on again!
The idea was to wake up at 4 am, take a night canoe, and then a van on the hopes that we could beat the strikers on the road! From jungle adventure to people adventure! It wasn’t that bad though. We passed a couple of early strikers who finally let us go on the premises that we were tourists and have nothing to do with their struggle anyway. We also had to help move a couple of trees that were on the road to stop people from doing what we were doing, but with no consequences. The rest of the trip to Kathmandu was without inconvenience.
Back in Kathmandu we decided to take our last day to see a little more of the city. We ran through Durbar square, and then took a rickshaw to the monkey temple (another one of them!) This time the driver was so old that he couldn’t peddal all his way to it! We felt bad so we got off half way through and climbed the stairs to the temple surrounded by funny monkeys and dogs
all the way up.
In Kathmandu we became addicted to a near by bakery that had the best yak cheese sandwich in Tamel (the backpacker neighbourhood), and where we got some very nice cold pizza as well. Other culinary delight we got addicted to was the famous momo (a kind of small stuffed rice pastry snack, or empanada)! We got them in almost every possible flavour: vegetarian, pork, meat, chicken, buffalo, fried, steamed, boiled, you name it! They were all delicious!
The next morning was “good by Nepal” time. We took a three hours late plane to New Delhi, where we spent an uncomfortable night in the airport chairs.
Next morning we took the plane to Egypt.
Soon:
Pyramids!
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Holisss
Que bellezas!!!! una foto mejor que la otra. Que felicidad ver y vivirlo a travez de los ojos de uds. Lo único malo, es que no entiendo nada de lo narrado, pero ya no importa, con las imagenes, imagino lo demás. Gracias por compartirlo con nosotros. Un beso inmenso a los dos. Cuidense mucho. Que Dios los proteja y bendiga. Los quieroooo. Tata