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Published: November 5th 2010
The village of Thakurdwara on the edge of Bardia National Park is not the Nepal of common imagination. The mountains that are so emblematic of Nepal can be seen looming vague and ephemeral in the hazy distance but here, on the lower reaches of the Karnali river, the land is flat, sun-baked and lazy. This area in the west of Nepal, south of the Himalaya and north of the border with India, is known as the Terai. It is populated by the Tharu, a people ethnically distinct from both their northern brothers and their Indian sisters. They are the keepers and tenders, tillers and herders of this incredibly fertile land and live a life of pastoral simplicity that has hardly changed for centuries. The land is tilled by oxen, the crops gathered by hand, they live in mud and straw houses and have no needs beyond the filling of their bellies and the propagation of life. This is of course a naive and simplistic summation of a complex people with traditions, troubles and desires of which I am entirely ignorant, but to walk through one of their villages and witness the joy, contentment and pleasure that is clearly manifest in the
faces of all we pass, wave to, or converse with, leads me to the simple and evident conclusion that happiness is easily attainable so long as your needs are few.
Though I have been entirely captivated by the incredible Tharu people and their delightful, clean and ordered village, the reason we made the 16 hour journey here from Pokhara was to visit the National Park. We got down from the bus at a place called Ambassa, which so far as I could tell in the darkness of 5am, was not very much of a place at all. Most people who travel here do so as part of an expensive package tour and stay in one of the park's up market lodges. Though there were none on our bus, had there have been they would have been picked up and driven the 16km to the park by their lodge's jeep. We had two options: to walk, or to pay 1000NR for a jeep of our own; it will not surprise you to learn that we had chosen the former option. As it turned out, upon disembarking the bus, tired and befuddled from a night of intermittent sleep, we were met
by Kaysup and his mate who offered to drive us to his guest house, with the assurance that if we did not want to stay there then no payment would be necessary. So, with mist carpeting the ground and a lazy sun slowly rising in the east, we clambered, bags and all, onto two motorbikes and sped along the rutted road to Kingfisher Lodge.
I immediately found Kaysup to be great company and had already resolved to stay with him before we had reached the lodge, I was therefore very happy to find that the small Tharu style mud hut that was to be our home for two nights was clean, comfortable, cheap, and set in a charming little garden. The incredible breakfast that we enjoyed upon arrival confirmed my already well entrenched suspicions that this was going to be a memorable place in which to spend our final days in Nepal. After eating we took ourselves off into the village, where we spent a memorable morning observing the Tharu harvesting rice, travelling to school, milking buffalo, walking goats and sundry other simple activities that gave us a brief but captivating insight into the lives of these delightful people.
Not one person that we passed, be they tilling the land, sitting in their immaculate front yards, riding buffalo or washing in the stream, failed to call out to us with a hearty namaste. Not a single one amongst hundreds. Almost all of the villagers stopped for a while to chat, many bought out their grandsons, daughters or cousins to be introduced and most, especially the children, asked for me to take their picture; something that I was more than happy to oblige them by doing. That morning, those people, the friendships made and the lessons learned, will truly stay with me for as long as my fast encroaching senility can be kept at bay.
The following morning we awoke with the misty and surprisingly chilly dawn to eat a hearty breakfast and to be assured an early entrance into the park. In the event we were still five minutes too late, as after a half hour trek through some gorgeous open sal forest, with the pale sun still having yet to have the strength to burn away the last wispy tendrils of mist that clung like gossamer around the feathered heads of the pampas that glowed a dreamy
orange above our heads, we came upon a domestic elephant whose mahout informed us that he had just seen a tiger crossing the river. We quickly made for the spot, hid ourselves amongst the grass and waited in excitement for its reappearance. As at Chitwan, we were again so close to one of these magnificent creatures, but without being rewarded with a sighting. The same happened later in the day. We were walking on the sandy banks of another river when we heard the distress call of deer which is a guarantee that a tiger is in close vicinity but, again, the elusive cat was too cunning for us.
This is not to say that the day was without its moments. We saw swamp deer and hog deer, which completed for me the full set of Nepali deer. We enjoyed watching troupes of monkeys playing out their chaotic hierarchical games which help form a cohesive societal group. The highlight though was a sighting of three wild elephants who, late in the day, came down to the river to take a sand bath by blowing great plumes of dust over their backs with their trunks. In truth the sightings were
only a pleasant bonus, the real highlight was simply the opportunity to spend a day in a simply gorgeous tract of true wilderness. This park, like Chitwan, had the feel, and the plentiful markings in the river banks to prove, that there is a plenitude of animals here that made it seem as if a significant sighting was always likely to be around the next corner, or about to spring out from the high grass or drop down from the trees above. In the end we missed our tiger, failed to spot a leopard or another sloth bear, did not see any more rhino or get anywhere near the snapping jaws of a crocodile; but the day was one I'll remember for a very long time for the simple pleasure of being enmeshed in, and at one with, a natural landscape entirely devoid, or at least recently purged, of man's possessive influence.
This day in the jungle bought to an end our stay in Nepal; all that remained to be achieved was to affect our departure. For reasons stated in my last blog, and which I'll again briefly summarise now, this was not necessarily going to be the straightforward
process that it otherwise should be. We were planning to return to India via the border at Mahendranagar in the far west of the country but, due to India having recently changed their rules regarding multiple entry visas, it is now required that we must spend at least two months out of the country before returning; something that we had not done. Too late did I realise that I could perhaps have gained special permission from the Indian embassy in Kathmandu. I would now have to rely on my not considerable intelligence, my ability to obfuscate and a large slice of luck. In my favour I had downloaded a spurious document from the Indian visa website that was an application to the Indian embassy in London to grant re-entry within the specified period, a document that should only be used in England to facilitate a return from there to India! We filled these in, attached our photo's and copies of our travel plans and flight details and hoped that we could blind them with science and a well rehearsed, but entirely fictitious tale of woe.
The lovely guys at the Nepali immigration post informed us that we would almost
certainly face problems on the Indian side and therefore refused to stamp us out until we had received permission to enter India; something that they were none too convinced would happen, having recently grown very used to disappointed travellers being turned back at the border. We were told that in the unlikely event our random documentation was enough to convince them to allow us to enter then we should come back so as to receive our departure stamp. So, we began to walk the kilometre track that crossed the no-mans-land that separated the two countries, with our hopes rapidly diminishing and being blown to the winds like the clouds of dust that billowed up from the dry, rutted track. To aid our chances we both stepped with our left feet in each and every cow pat along the road, I fed monkeys bananas, hoping by doing so to invoke the loyalty of Hanuman to aid us in our quest and Anny had worn her Ganesha t-shirt, hoping that the God of good luck and the remover of obstacles would help us in our mission.
Dusty, hot and not a little nervous we finally reached Indian immigration and were met
by a perfunctory hello from a stern looking man who immediately informed us that crossing the border was an impossibility and that we'd have to return the 20 hours to Kathmandu to gain permission from the embassy there. No amount of distressed imprecations helped, our story that we had been told by the FRRO in Mumbai that all we needed were the documents we produced, my ascertations that we were meeting my brother in Delhi (true) who was there at the personal invitation of the Indian government (not so true) and the detailed travel plans that we produced all failed to gain us anything more than repeated replies in the negative, getting increasingly angry with each avenue we pursued. I asked, hopefully and with distinct and clear stress on the word "anything", if there was, indeed, anything I could do to facilitate our crossing. The now distinctly gruff guard said that there was NOTHING that could be done and that anyway he was leaving now for his Diwali holidays and that if we had the audacity and nerve to try any more entreaties, then they should be directed at his two remaining colleagues.
Not being one to give up
so easily, and seeing a glimmer of hope in his less menacing looking colleagues, I decided to make one last attempt. I asked if it was possible for them to phone the embassy in Kathmanu or Delhi; Anny asked in a sweet and simpering manner if they could please help us as so much was riding upon our return; we attempted a display of near tearful disappointment; I tried to charm them with my limited Hindi; I assured them of my love for their country, but all to no avail. Defeated, we rose from our chairs to leave. As I was doing so I had my money belt in my hand and, holding it open to reveal my three remaining 1000NR notes, I asked, pointedly, if there was really nothing that could be done to remedy the situation. The guard looked me in the eyes with exasperation and was about to say a final no but he saw my pointedly obvious downward glance at my money belt and, quickly understanding the meaning of my gesture, asked to see our passports and documentation one final time.
It was as he began making a great show of re-reading our papers that
I started to believe that we were finally going to be successful. A smug feeling quickly came over me that I tried desperately to repress in fear that my arrogance would scupper our now increasingly realistic chances of making it back to India. After a half hour of deliberation I was told to go back to the Nepali immigration office to get our exit stamps. I ran the entire way, returning breathless and sweating profusely. Anny and I refused to meet each others eyes as we both believed that to do so would somehow ruin our now tangible chances. I was then asked to follow the man who I had shown the money to into the back room. I quickly folded the bribe and secreted it between the pages of my passport. I knew that this was now crunch time as either I had read the situation correctly and a bribe, or backsheesh, was indeed what was required, or I had not, and I was about to attempt the same and potentially land myself in a great deal of trouble; the bribing of a government official being, I assume, a rather serious offense. In the end he took my passport,
pocketed the money, and gave me the necessary forms to fill in, even helping me with the more tricky questions! India, I truly love you and will be forever grateful that here, unlike anywhere else in the world, anything is always possible.
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anonymous
non-member comment
hey Scott and Anny. Have you thought about putting a video up? I don't know if it's possible on blogs or not.. only mention it as I remember that you wrote something about the sounds and smells of india when you first went travelling...might be interesting to show us non-travellers what different corners of the worlds sound like!