dancing water, hidden tiger.

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I am back in India now. Back to the urine drenched streets and the relentless touts. Back to finding the cheapest hotel room with the minimum number of dead rats. Back to dealing with Tuktuk drivers with acute attention deficit disorders. Back to India. And I love it.

To be fair, Nepal boasts all these charming traits as well, but it all feels much more touristy around Kathmandu and Pokhara, which covers the "real" Nepal under a soft, Western-sensitive blanket full of Gurkha Beer and buffalo steaks. Do not get me wrong, I enjoyed my time in the tourist swarming areas, but I am no tourist (or so I tell myself) I am a backpacker who lives for the road blocks and striking, the Roti and Daal Bhat, the riding on the roofs of local buses, rather than the spacious AC tourist carriers. I am not living if I have no audience of curious locals surrounding me, not breathing if reading a book does not bring a dozen children peering over my shoulder at the cryptic scribe, not existing if I am not on every camera-phone in the rural sub-continent, grinning inanely whilst eating a banana or buying some peanuts.

Okay I might have gone a bit far there, and although I got to Delhi through the rather remote Western border of Nepal, the locals were curious, but on reflection their stares were probably justified. I spent most of the morning crossing the border without realising that in my rush to get up before sunrise from the Nepali border town of Mahendranagar, I had left my bright, fluorescent orange ear plugs in. And although I am learning to eat with my right hand, I am still a bit of a beginner; maybe at toddler standard; and often manage to spill the majority of it down myself.

(At this stage, I would just like to note in the history of these blogs, I just used my first ever semi-colon.... is it meant to be there? I may put another one in for good measure.)

There is a risk this blog may turn into a bit of a dissertation, so I will update you on the last week or two as briefly as possible.

From Pokhara I shimmied on over to Kathmandu, where in my boredom I counted eight bus crashes on the way, one of which happened ahead of us, causing a three hour delay. Standard procedure. Off the bus a Swiss-Australian snow border exchanged a sentence or two with me, we sized each other up, trusted our instincts, and decided to save money on a scanky hotel room by sharing for the two nights. Travelling alone really heightens your ability to gauge a person, and we shared a good few beers, explored the Kathmandu eateries, and checked out the standard sights of Kathmandu valley. A couple of highlights were the Buddhist Stupa, Monkey temple (I apologise to all Nepali's for not remembering the real name) and the graphic Karma Sutra carvings on entrance to an old people's home set up in part of a Hindu Temple. Mother Theresa visited and it really made me wonder whether she noticed them, or if they were discretely covered in preparation for her arrival.

My biggest ticket item for my worldwide jaunt, came the next day, when I headed off in a group of 18 with 5 guides for what promised to be the "only trip of its kind". 5 grade (4+ for the sake of insurance companies) white water rapids right out in the Nepali wilderness on the raging river Karnali. It certainly was out in a tourist-free zone, as it took 2 and a half spine-jolting days travel on a bus to get to the put-in place.

The rapids did not disappoint, the likes of "Godhouse" and "Sweetness and Light" needed scouted beforehand for the most-survivable route, whereas "Humans for Lunch" and "Man-eater" seemed to come upon us out of the blue. The two manned rafts managed to stay vaguely upright throughout the trip, which was reassuring as the "dry"bag containing my worldly possessions did not look like it could keep anything but splashes from getting drenched.

The gear raft however, did not have as lucky an escape. It had all the kitchen equipment, tents, food and most importantly, beer, strapped tight to it every morning. However, Diya, the expedition leader got it stuck on a rock, and we watched it slowly turn completely upside down.... at the beginning of a very long series of rapids. Our raft was first in on the carnage and with the safety kayakers, we paddled as hard as we could into the side of the gear raft to force it to shore. To no avail. When it was nearly to safety where it could be flipped upright again, the current caught us and we were flung into the next rapid. Our guide (an animal of a bloke) literally pleaded with us to paddle more, paddle harder, paddle faster. But time and time again just before we managed to nudge the gear raft into the haven of an eddy it was swallowed by another rapid, resulting in more and more precious items for our camp coming loose and getting sucked into the frothing water. In the end, with a huge recovery operation we managed to recover nearly everything, with frozen chicken and powdered milk being the only real loss. Hours later we were still getting yells of "salami" and we would paddle as hard as possible to collect the tasty morsel.

Every night we pulled onto a perfectly white, sandy beach on the river shore, collected driftwood and lit a huge fire to gather round and drink rum punch under the milky-way. (Sounds heavenly, don't you think?) The loss of chicken was quickly reconciled when some ever inquisitive visitors negotiated the currents and paddled across to our camp with four live chickens in tow. After bicep-curling them, in their upside down positions to estimate their weight, they were bought, and had a few minuted to await their fate. I am not sure how much of the chicken slaughter I should tell, but I can be reassured that this method is much more humane than the running-around-like-a-headless-chicken technique. The executioner got the clucking birdie lying down on a rock. He then put one foot on its legs, and one on its pinned back wings, with a hand clamped firmly around its head he exposed the neck, and spent a good thirty seconds working away at it with a blunt knife. Give it another minute and the spasmodic writhing of the chicken subsides, and it is proclaimed dead....skinned....gutted....cooked....and declared delicious.

*If you are reading this, don't feel like it has to be more than a skim-job, I am mainly writing it for my benefit, as it is my attempt at a journal to read back on when I am grey and old. I mean, this is getting VERY long*

So the rafting trip was awesome, and well worth the dollars, even at their new-improved strength against the pound. The final couple of days was on a much calmer, flatter Karnali, and it gave us loads of time to admire the stunning scenery, and chat rubbish. We had a great raft of people, the highlight for me probably being the two french guys who I just found hilarious, particularly their faces when they got pushed into the cold Himalayan water. There is NOTHING funnier than the phrase "Jack, What are you doing?!" is uttered from Guillam's mouth.

I headed onto Bardia National Park, disrupting Tom and Toyah's peace in coupledom by being with them for two days solid at the park. Although now I bet they are having withdrawal symptoms from me, I sense it will not be long before they are searching me out in Cambodia or begging me to share their camper in Oz. (hahaha, I hope you guys are reading this.)

Okay, so quickly.... we did an elephant ride, awesome. I thought it was a bit cruel at first having four grown people on its back, but then when I realised the elephant did whatever it wanted, stopping to munch on some tasty leaves or grass, I realised it didn't have a bad deal. The mahout would use his toes behind its ears to "drive" the elephant. But also in dense jungle would say something like "Nellie, branch top left" and the elephant would reach up with its trunk and break it so that it would not hit us. It also literally knocked down a couple of trees to make its way through the rather impassable route the mahout had chosen. At the end Nellie took the dollar bill tip from Tom and handed it to the mahout, pretty slick.

we spent a day on a "jungle walk" apparently being the best way of seeing the animals, in particular the ever-elusive tiger. We spent three hours in midday camped out by a river bank, huddled under a bush with the guide, silently waiting.... and saw sweet FA. However just when we were walking back, we heard a rather heavy crunch in the undergrowth ahead of us. We stopped and listened intently. The guide thought it may be a rhino, so we crept down to the river bank to see if it was coming to drink. The next moment a herd of 26 elephant came crashing down the bank just ahead of us. Before I never rated Indian nelliephants, seeing them as tame and inferior to their African cousins. However seeing them within 100 metres of you on foot gave them a new-found respect.

Although Indian and Nepali reserves do not have the same density of game than the vast plains of East Africa, they still can be just as exhilirating. We had stopped to put our trainers back on after crossing a river in the park, when the guide pointed out that tracks next to us showed where a spotted dear had been killed hours earlier by a tiger. Whats more, was we then followed a trail made by the tiger dragging the limp body of the deer through the sal forest and into denser vegetation. On reflection, trying to convince the guide to let us keep on tracking the trail was probably a bad move, and luckily he refused, as the tiger was a female with two cubs apparently, and it would not have appreciated our presence whilst she munched on her breakfast.

Thats enough, I am nearly out of Nepal in this journal (which was yesterday) will fill in on the delights of Delhi another time. Off to meet some new acquaintances for a bevvy.

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