My last Nepal adventure, spontaneous and a welcome change of pace, was to visit Chitwan, one of Nepal's national parks in the terrai jungle. The park is home to Bengal tigers, wild elephants, sloth bears, barking deer, spotted deer, really really big deer, monkeys, and rhinos. My guidebook indicated that poaching during the Maoist insurgency really hurt animal headcount, but all the more reason to visit and do a tourist vote to save the animals!
I signed up for a package tour (gasp!), as low season in pokhara made me fear large empty guesthouses. Lucky me, I ended up with 3 Australians men and Tessa, from Holland. Our visit began with a cultural show, where my buddy Maddi helped me get a dancing pic with my favorite stick-guy! The next day, a morning canoe ride allowed us to see so many beautiful birds, including kingfishers, Siberian ducks, and peacocks! We followed this with a jungle trek, where we used our naturalist skills to examine scat. I really liked the trek, but my overactive imagination had me scanning the trees for bengals checking us out a la buffet-perusal style.
In the afternoon I opted for a jeep safari to maximize rhino-sighting probabilities. Out the gate we saw amazing, beautiful, larger-than-caribou-sized deer, troops of monkeys, and sunning crocodiles. Then, for the next 3 hours my eyes were peeled, scanning dense green for, I don't know, something not so green?! As our time dwindled and still no coveted rhino, my British microeconomist jeep-safari crush said, "well today's not our lucky day". BAM! Almost immediately a sloth bear, right next to the road! I got a great look, but unfortunately the pic looks like a bush. Then, minutes later, I pointed as we passed, what?, ears! We threw the jeep in reverse and found ourselves face to face (and ears!) with our rhino!
Yay! Pause to savor the moment.
Whew, ok so the last day I woke up to coffee by the river, so peaceful, then ran into my kiwi pals Kylie and Anne. We headed to the river to see a hilarious spectacle of elephants, tourists, and well, me! That's right, I "bathed" an elephant!
Last but not least, the "elephant safari". Riding an elephant is slightly painful, kinda fun, and mostly about riding an elephant vs spotting wildlife. Interestingly, the ride began outside the park boundary, where locals were chopping fire wood from the trees as we lumbered by. When I asked my guide about the wood collection, I was told they can't cut a living tree down, but can take wood from it and cut a dead tree down. Considering trees don't live very long without leafy branches, it seems apparent this policy might need some refinement. It was a sobering reminder that the tourism that provides an incentive to protect the wilderness also provides a means for a larger and richer local population, meaning more meals, more wood. Gross oversimplification for blog purposes.
All in all, a grand adventure! Good luck rhinos! May you live long, and prosper.
