Chitwan National Park - Part I

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Chitwan National Park - Part I

We had a wonderful stay of two days at the Chitwan National Park marred only by the perfidy of the Royal Nepal Travel Company (RNTC) through which we had booked the tour.

We had booked an independent unit of two bedrooms because our daughter Bunny was also with us and we did not want to treat her as a child and make her sleep in our bedroom. She was past her teens at that time.

However, we were forced to do so, because in the evening a very big group from Mumbai arrived and the managers of the resort found that they were short of accommodation. They “requested” us that we make do with a single room while they allotted the bedroom upstairs to the people in the group.

We were extremely reluctant to do so, but then they offered us the Hobson’s choice: They will take away BOTH our rooms and accommodate us in some far away hotel. This second option was unthinkable, so we agreed to manage with a single bedroom. (All the bedrooms had attached bathroom.)

We asked them to refund the two nights’ charge for one bedroom, which we were giving up and for which we had already paid in full in Mumbai. They refused to do so, telling us to collect it from their Mumbai office, where we had booked the tour. Being ‘Gullibles’, we agreed. Not that there was much choice in the matter.

After coming back to Mumbai, my husband tried THREE times to get the refund from the Mumbai office, but they refused to pay, saying that THEY had no record that our bedroom was allotted to someone else, for those two nights.

We were still greenhorn travelers at that time and had not come across the New Murphy’s Laws displayed at the Queenstown’s Sky tower, which states,

“Judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgment.”

We are more experienced now. Under the same circumstances, we will not vacate our room nowadays, unless we were paid back fully on the spot.

Unscrupulous travel agents are the biggest killjoys a tourist faces, apart from the vagaries of weather, beggars, mosquitoes and ‘Montezuma’s curse’ (i.e. traveler’s Diarrhea).

However, the weather, beggars and mosquitoes and Montezuma spared us at Chitwan, and so we really enjoyed our stay there despite the cramped quarters.

Chitwan was the Royal Preserve of the kings of Nepal, set apart for hunting, by them. It is in the flat “Terai” region bordering India and Nepal with a ‘savanna’ type of grasslands. It is the most famous habitat for the single-horned Asian Rhino. The ‘elephant grass’ that grows here almost hides the rhino completely. You can see the rhinos in this grass only if you are higher than them i.e. on an elephant.

http://www.nepalhomepage.com/travel/places/terai/chitwan.html

We had taken the morning elephant ride. In a large clearing, the Government owned elephants were brought by their ‘mahauts’. The open ‘houdha’ was already fixed on the elephant’s back. You climb up to a wooden platform by a short staircase, and get into the ‘houdha’ by climbing in and sit facing out, with your legs dangling on the elephant’s back. In those rides, you are almost assured of seeing the rhino because the forest rangers are well informed about the movements of these beasts.

We came very near a rhino mother and baby before we spotted them. The elephant grass was so tall at this place that the rhino and the baby were well hidden in the grass. They were peacefully cropping the grass when suddenly the rhino mother raised her head and tensed up to catch either our smell or the noise, and that is when we saw them. (I do not know whether their sense of smell or hearing is acute. I am told that their sight is poor.) What she heard/smelt (No, no, ‘smelled’, English is again playing her tricks on me.) was enough to alarm her and she ran away followed by her offspring. All we could see then was the ‘wake’ of her in the tall elephant grass, which parted and closed again behind them, thus engulfing the pair and hiding them.

That one sight of the rhinos was reward enough for us, though I agree with Ogden Nash that a rhino is a beast, which is not a feast for the human eyes. But they are rare and in their wild state, they are interesting, so, we promptly forgave those rascals of travel agents, who had duped us.

Later we saw an orphaned baby rhino rescued from tigers by the forest rangers. (Its mother had been killed by the tigers, or at least, that is what the forest rangers claimed. However, I personally think that the rhino mother was killed by the poachers. Rhino horn, which is supposed to be an aphrodisiac, fetches a large sum. The tigers would not have spared the baby rhino, but the poachers would, because the baby had no horn as yet.) It was kept in a compound. It was hardly one and a half feet tall. All it did was eat grass. I do not think baby rhinos would make good pets. There is no communication between them and the humans.

Generally, I love baby animals. I always feel like hugging and petting kittens, pups, lambs, and colts, even baby lions. (Read my blog about Rotorua highlights.) However, I did not feel like cuddling the little rhino. Perhaps, its thick, rough, pockmarked ‘armor plate’ skin as well as its total disregard of all humans was putting me off.

However, when the circus came to the town, I have seen baby elephants being treated like pets by their handlers and there was excellent communication between them.

The elephant did its full circuit of the jungle. It is amazing how these large animals can move into the thick jungle, silently, where you cannot see the possibility of even a small squirrel penetrating, without making a lot of noise in breaking the small branches. We did not see the Bengal tiger, but we did see a number of monkeys and a few deer and a few birds.

Bunny was given a camera all her own for the first time and the sort of photos she took were enough to start a rival channel to the National Geographic or Animal Planet. I mean, why waste good film on things like ants, spiders, spider web, fly in a spider web, grasshoppers and a few more unidentifiable insects?

An elephant is an intelligent animal. Like dogs, they can understand human language commands of their mahouts. They are incredibly dexterous with their trunks. We had a good proof of this.

As we were coming back from the ride, I leaned over to see something closely on the ground and dropped my bag. As a reflex action, I leaned even further and tried to retrieve my bag, (I was quite secure in the houdha and could not have fallen even if I wanted to, which I did not want anyway.) and suddenly realized that the bag was a good 10 feet down, where I could not reach. We told the mahaut of our predicament. To our astonishment, the mahaut gave a command to the elephant, and the elephant retrieved the bag with his trunk and gave it to the mahaut, who passed it back to us.

Back at the clearing, the mahaut gave us two choices of getting down the elephant, either you step out on the platform when the elephant is standing near it, or he will make the elephant sit down and then you slide down its flank. We opted for the latter.

When the elephant sat down, we were still at a height of about 8 feet, and I think sliding down those 8 feet was the most enjoyable thing I did. I almost sprained my ankle, but the exhilaration I felt, was worth it.

Skating, skiing, surfing, tobogganing, all may have their adrenalin-pumping thrills, I do not know about that, but sliding down an elephant has a charm of its own, which is unsurpassed by these rather mundane and tame sports.

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