Last weekend I went to Chitwan National Park in the Southern part of Nepal known as the Terai. Chitwan National Park was the first national park of Nepal and is essentially a natural preserve for the endangered species that live there including white rhinos and Bengali tigers. It's located about 5 hours south by bus from Kathmandu, but as I'll tell you later, the ride can be quite atrocious.
Friday
We left Kathmandu at 630am. At this point I have been in Nepal for 4 weeks. 90% percent of the people on this trip have been in Nepal for like a week, so I was basically the vet, haha. They are definitely a little quieter than the group that has come and gone since I've been here, but they are still great fun and great people. After a relatively quick five hour bus ride, we arrived at the Rainforest Hotel in Chitwan. As soon as we got there we had lunch, then proceeded on a quick walk through the outer rim of the main jungle to visit the government owned elephants. they were quite depressing. I will leave it at that.
We finished off the walk with a river view of the sunset, it was actually pretty nice, but nothing on this day was that impressive, I was hoping for much better in the coming day.
That evening, as a group, we went to go watch a Tharu culture show. The Tharu are the local caste who apparently are immune to malaria through some sort of genetic and lifestyle aspects of the people. It's really quite interesting, and I'd love to take a closer look at this later on. The show itself was much less kitschy than I thought it'd be, so it was definitely a pleasant surprise.
After the show and a quick dinner, there was a lot of time to just sit around and get to know the other volunteers. It was really nice. After we all started to settle in for bed, however, the monsoon kicked in and there were thunderstorms all evening. I was pretty annoyed, and thought that it might mess up the plans for the next day, but in the end the rain was probably a really good thing because it killed the heat for the most part. Chitwan is known as one of the hottest parts of Nepal and it probably didn't get over like 25 degrees C all weekend.
But no mind that I didn't bring any rain gear or close toed shoes, hah.
Saturday
No one was sure what the day would be like because of the rain. The government elephants were pretty depressing the day before, but I was hopeful about this day. While it was still pouring rain, we all hopped on the backs of some jeeps and headed out to the river.
The first activity of the day was just a relaxing ride in a big canoe down the river. It was actually really nice because of the drop in temperature.
After the canoes, we went on a pretty boring jungle walk, save for the fact that I was wading through leech infested waters in shorts and flip flops. :D
Our destination, however, was quite exciting, we arrived at the local elephant breeding center where we were able to see the first ever twin baby elephants born in Nepal. One of them even came over to the fence to interact with us! It was like a giant wrinkly gray baby with prickly hair!!!
This next part, however, was the best, and it was the elephant washing in the river. I will leave the photos to explain the story.
The last part of the day was the elephant safari which was also pretty relaxing. No tigers spotted, but definitely an experience.
Sunday
The rain started up again on Saturday evening and caused several landslides all around Nepal with a couple along the route back home. Basically what should have been a 4-5 hour trip back to Kathmandu turned into a 12.5 hour trip from Hell (that was actually kind of entertaining). While nothing like Ms Katherine Hu's bus trip from Cambridge to Edinburgh, it was definitely kind of annoying.
We left at 930am and arrived in Kathmandu at 10pm. Needless to say I missed the last bus to Banepa and I ended up staying overnight in Kathmandu and watched the World Cup Final. Boo Spain.
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