Chasing Rhinos in Chitwan

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Today was a day where we would get to chase rhinos while riding an elephant. Exciting huh... well, that's what the travel brochure said anyway.

Royal Chitwan National Park is a national park in the south of Nepal where the British Royals used to hunt the poor animals for fun. Today it's a major tourist attraction and conservation park which promises the traveller the chance to get close to exotic wildlife such as rhinos, sloth bears and even the occasional bengal tiger.

Due to major delays on the road to Chitwan (due to the Maoist terrorists) we couldn't take the super cheap bus but instead had to fly on a tiny vomit-inducing plane (major rip off). The 25 minute flight gave us a bird's eye view of the Nepalese country-side including the gorgeous stepped mountainsides and rivers. Unfortunately I didn't get to see much of the scenery spending most of the flight with my eyes closed praying that I wouldn't throw up. This flight was like a flying roller coaster - a tiny 20 seater plane that let you experience every bump, turn and dip. Kitty assures me that the view was spectacular though.

Upon arriving we got into a van and experience a little more motion sickness bouncing up and down along the non-existant roads at speeds way to fast for the poor van. Finally we pulled into the lodge only to find that we were the only guests there. The opimists in us would say that we would now get private service, however we couldn't silence the loud negative voice which was screaming "dodgy place" and "these people could murder us cos we're all alone on the edge of a jungle filled with savage beasts".

Our first adventure was an elephant safari into the jungle to spot all the animals. We got a really ugly elephant with weird pink splotches all over his face and ears - as if his skin had rotted away. Apparently this is normal and happens when elephants itch themselves too much. Normal or not he was still ugly and unfortunately for him, and us he seemed to have severe diahorrea.

The ride was really fun, though a bit painful (there were four of us squashed onto his back). We wandered through the jungle for about 2 hours and managed to see lots of animals. Unfortunately they were all rhinos. We even managed to catch one bathing in the mud.

So as to justify the immense cost of the elephant ride we convinced ourselves that we saw more than rhinos. After all we did see a peacock, a turquoise blue fly and a green spider. How's that for variety?

So the elephant ride was fun but a little disappointing. Next on the agenda was visiting the local Tharu people and watching them do a stick dance. Then the highlight of the night would be a slideshow. To our immense disappointment 😉 we discovered that we wouldn't be have the priviledge of enjoying the stick dance and even worse, wouldn't get the slideshow. Instead we got to do a much more enjoyable village walk with a guide who was apparently 17 and looked more like he was 12. This was actually quite interesting as we got to see the locals working away in rice paddy field and their mud stick huts. We even got to see a baby wild boar.

Thus ended our first day in Chitwan. Tomorrow promised crocodiles and a visit to see baby elephants.

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Photos

Lets cram those tourists on the elephant!
Come on chaps, we can fit more than that, can't we?

Even he can be cute sometimes
I never thought I'd consider a rhino to be cute, but this girl wasn't too bad.

Splish splash
I was so scared the naughty elephants would spray my camera. For some reason, anytime we went near water, the elephants thought it would be funny to spray us.

Muddy bath
I'm not sure whether he was trying to clean himself or make himself dirtier. I'm sure his mother would be real mad at him.

Local Tharu village stick houses
Hope the big bad wolf doesn't visit here.

Rice paddies
Lots of 'em