Blogs from Chitwan, Nepal, Asia - page 8

Travelling gives you the chance to do some pretty amazing things. The problem is, telling people about them makes you seem like a smug git. You definitely want to avoid being the sort of person who sets a Facebook status like 'Just off to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef...tough life...' You know, the kind of person who has about 3,000 bands on their wrists, a 4-inch beard and a t-shirt with 'Beer Lao' on it. With that mind, I'll do my best not to sound to travellery (it's a word!) when I tell you a story from my time in Nepal. The Chitwan National Park may boast some of the most verdant vegetation this side of the Cretaceous Period, but so far we’d found the lack of animals slightly disconcerting. Our safari guides had ... read more

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 ... read more

Our trip to Nepal would not be complete without an obligatory excursion to the famous Chitwan National Park. Chitwan supposedly boasts a great variety of animals including a healthy population of rhinos and tigers, but it’s not known for being the easiest place to spot them. Especially at this time of year, the grass is so tall and thick that spotting anything is nothing short of a miracle. Our closest encounters with wildlife were a few spotted deer and the odd bird or two. Really, the main reason to come to Chitwan is the experience of riding elephants through the jungle. And ride elephants we did, as we spent approximately 9 hours on the backs of these pachyderms over the course of 3 days. Riding through the forest was actually quite relaxing and tranquil. Jordan even ... read more

Chitwan National Park – Rhino spotting, elephant riding and being attacked by leaches, just another normal day at the office really. Although I may have spoken rather negatively about Kathmandu and Pokhara in my last blog my time in Chitwan National Park was a totally different experience. After a 5 hour bus journey from Kathmandu I reached the national park gates and was greeted by my guide in his flame red open back pickup truck. Several of us piled in and we headed to our hotel on some very bumpy dirt tracks. It was a very strange experience because the vast majority of the traffic on the roads inside the national park were that well known automotive brand from back home…… the elephant! It was the most bizarre thing I’ve seen, elephants were almost replacing taxi’s! ... read more

Chicken, geese, goats, cats, dogs, cows, buffalo, lizards, spiders, miniature frogs, monkeys, spotted deer, sambar deer, rhinos, elephants and crocodiles - welcome to Chitwan National Park where we have truly been immersed into the Nepali "wildlife" and encountered each and everyone of the animals listed above..... We arrived in a tropical downpour after a surprisingly short and relatively comfy (i.e. we could fit our apparently gigantic legs into the seat) bus ride and and made our way through the backstreets of Sauraha to our little guest house. Cute at first with its clucking chickens and organic vegetable garden, not so much so after being reassured that the big spiders in the thatched roof were not poisonous, seeing the mosquito infested pit of a toilet and waking up to realise that we had shared our hut with ... read more