recap: Chitwan National Park, Nepal
This post is to recap on Chitwan National Park which is where we stayed in Nepal before crossing the border into India.
We stayed in Sauraha - a town generally known to be the most touristy, although being off-season at the moment it was fine. After a lengthy game of guest house bargaining we settled on a relatively cheap and slightly nasty place on the river - mainly because the guy who operated it won us over with his jungle knowledge and trustworthiness.
The next day we left with two guides (Park law dictates two guides as mandatory now for any group, after a spate of deaths) for a day long jungle trek by canoe and foot - not some packaged touristy jeep ride thing.
As we started off, dark clouds were rolling over the hills separating Nepal and India, and thunder rumbled in the distance. It's easy to see how locals believe(d) thunder is a product of the Gods...it's much louder and more powerful here than in NZ! Luckily, the weather stayed relatively fine though and as usual, very hot. Torrential rain would have brought out the leeches.
There are quite a few tigers in the Park, along with rhino, deer, wild boars, peacocks, all sorts of bird life, crocodiles, sloth bears, wild elephants, and lots of other fauna and flora. We saw most of these, but sadly no tiger - they're very elusive and you really need to spend 4-5 days in the jungle to see them. It was exhilarating being in the natural habitat of wild animals - there was one time when walking through grass about 2.5m tall where Suda the guide in front suddenly gave the stop signal. After a few seconds of silence there was a slight rustling in the grass several meters away and then a thumping of ground as an obviously massive animal took off, thankfully, in the opposite direction to us. Suda gave chase to see where it went and saw a huge wild boar crashing through the tall grass with its tusks. These puppies weigh up to 200kg and reach 6" long.
We stopped for lunch in a small clearing under mango trees. After eating, four Government elephants and a baby elephant with their mahouts (drivers) came past where we sat, so Suda called them over and the elephants had a break with us. The baby elephant was so cool, very inquisitive, and ate all the under ripe mangoes we had shaken down from the trees - it would even get its trunk into our bags and pockets to find them! It was awesome to spend so much time with these amazing animals in their natural environment - we just had to gather some more mangoes after they'd gone!
Back at the guest house, we had the best "Nepali set meal" we've had in Nepal (in my humble opinion), with chutney made from mangoes we picked in the jungle and a curry made from ferns we picked as well. And of course the obligatory dal baht (a lentil soup/curry) and rice.
We did some other things in Pokhara as well - a jungle entry on elephant back which was cool as it allowed us to get a lot closer to animals (elephant smell masks human smell), I got my first straight razor shave from a barber, saw a Nepali stick dance/culture show which was classic Nepal (complete with midway power cut and fake English accent), and just chilling out by the river which borders the Park.
See more photos on my Flickr page for Chitwan.