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Published: December 11th 2011
To get our frost bitten bodies warm again, we decide to change the scenery from mountain walls of the Himalayas to bustling jungles of Chitwan. Enduring another 6 hour bus journey in a crammed bus with Bollywood music blasting away, we are relieved when we finally reach the gates of Chitwan and are looking forward to having a rendezvous with some feisty beasts. Chitwan, a UNESCO world heritage site, is the oldest national park in Nepal and is home for a multitude of endangered species including the king of the jungle - the Bengal tiger, a lean mean killing machine a.k.a. the jungle pussycat. We learn that our best chance to have a close encounter with wild animals is having a jungle safari on foot, although it comes naturally with a considerable risk factor since some ferocious creatures might fancy us as a delicious snack. The mother nature has a nasty habit of biting (king cobra), clawing (sloth bear), stinging (mosquitos), sucking blood (leeches) and insofar as pythons are concerned strangling. To mitigate the risk, we hire two local guides, born and bred in Chitwan, Lama and Bougad, with whom we will spend two full days and nights in the wild.
While taking an evening walk around Sauraha, we hear people shouting about a rhino. Walking towards the source of the noise, we come across a young male rhino out of the jungle for an easy meal.
Setting off early next morning, the adventure begins in earnest with a two hour canoe ride down river Rapti, during which we see plenty of sunbathing crocodiles and a plethora of colorful birds among them many migrating birds from Europe, who prefer spending the winter in more pleasant climate. Smart birds. After disembarking we are given a very brief but informative safety training before hitting the bush. We are advised that in a case of a charging rhino, we should climb to the nearest tree. Without a doubt, a sound advise I agree, but what if there happens to be a snake in the tree that is supposed to save my life? Then again, I usually tend to think too much. Another solid advice we are told is that should we come across a tiger, we are to maintain a cool eye contact and not to show any signs of panic. I'm glad I play poker, I just hope the tiger won't call
my bluff. Oh well, don't cross your bridges until you come to them.
Our first encounter with the wild mammals is a couple of wild boars, but they prefer to keep their distance. Perhaps they overheard my comment to our guides about them making a tasty lunch. During next two days we will see a lot of barking and spotted deers, monkeys and some majestical stags. We even spot an old monitor lizard, who is cool as a lounge lizard and completely ignores our existence. When monkeys above us start screaming a tiger alert, we become very conscious that we are deep in the tiger territory. Alas, the closest we come to meeting a tiger is the distinctive stench of feline piss and a fresh tiger turd, although we see quite a few tiger prints that our guides reckon are recent. Most likely, we have been observed by eyes of the tigers in numerous occasions, while they have imperceptibly escaped our attention. However we get lucky with rhinos. We are hiding by a stream at sunset, when a huge rhino comes to take his mud bath. We are standing within 10 meters from the rhino, and we are rather
grateful for having the stream between us. The rhino population in Chitwan is in fact thriving despite the demand for rhino horns remaining deadly high with horns fetching more than 20000$ per kilo. And that is a lot of money in a country where average annual income is about 1500$. For the healthy rhino population, we have the Army of Nepal to thank for as since 2009 they have provided the national park much needed protection. On our second day in the jungle, we get invited for a tea in an army outpost inside the Park. While sipping tea, I ask the army major in charge of the compound, what they do with the poachers they catch. He jovially replies that they prefer to shoot the poachers rather than catch them and hand over to law enforcement agencies, as in that case the poachers might be able to bribe their way out. I start to understand why there has not been a single rhino killed by a bullet since 2010. Moreover, extrajudicial killings make economic sense in a poor country, given the high cost of legal processing and jail time.
Being veterans of the Himalaya, we are thinking a
jungle safari would not be physically very challenging. Dead wrong, by the end of the first day, our guides have made us walk 30 kilometers in the jungle and we swallow our bruised pride once again. We stay the nights in a small Tharu village, with no electricity nor running water, at edge of the jungle. Tharu are the indigenous ethnic people of Chitwan, who are known for exceptional resistance to malaria and they call themselves a people of the forest. The village has population of about 100, which was 120 until the last year when a wild elephant killed about 20 villagers. I'm about to ask whether these poor villagers were trampled to pulp while in their slumbers but then it occurs to me that this might be one of those rare occasions in which ignorance truly is bliss. Hence, I shut my mouth. As a welcome drink we are offered a choice between tea and raksi, the latter being a home made distilled alcohol. Curiosity takes us over, and Nastya goes for raksi. And the choice is right, the drink we are served is made of rice and served with hot water, which makes its taste akin to
sake's. Raksi is said to be a medicine against malaria and should make one strong and brave. This is heady stuff and we will need that for the night. As the only westerners in the village we are being treated as royals and are given the best hut of the village with newly spread clay on the walls and a traditional stray roof. When the lights go off ,all the creaks and swishes feed our imagination with images of our hut being coinhabited by a legion of nocturnal jungle critters. Fortified by raksi, we reason that all the sounds must be coming from outside, and use our best set of earplugs to kill off the noise. If you don't hear it, it doesn't exist.
After two eventful days in the jungle, we start our return by a Nepali helicoper i.e. an oxcart driven by two bulls who get distracted by every single cow and require a heavy whipping in order to stay on the track. Back in Sauraha, we change the vehicle and mount an elephant for a ride. Not the smoothest one we have had as the massive shoulder blades of our elephant make us go up and
down with every step the elephant takes. Getting seasick on an elephant is the one risk scenario we failed to anticipate. However we are not ungrateful for the ride and next morning we show our appreciation by helping elephants with their morning scrub in the river. Although judging by Nastya's performance, I'm not completely sure who's bathing whom.
The law of the jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill. - Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book.
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Andy
non-member comment
Well, I'd like to have a stuffed poacher on my wall...