This is one
of those stories that fully demonstrates the need for adaptability while living
in Nepal. As I mentioned a few posts ago, Ellen, Emily, and I had a trip
planned to visit Chitwan National Park. Things did not go as planned. First, a
series of bandhs made us change the dates of our trip, and then prevented me
from getting into KTM to stay with friends the night before my bus left. Then,
poor Emily got sick and had to bow out.
And so there
I was, bus-ticketless, and on the wrong side of KTM valley, when our tale
begins…
Day 1 – Best Shown in the Form of a
Time Table
4:35 – First alarm goes off. Decide to curl
up in warm bed until the next one.
4:39 – Host dad
knocks on door to rouse me. Sleep is for the weak, anyway.
5:06 – Just before leaving the house, my aamaa
insists on tying a scarf around my head, so that I, dressed only in shades of
blue, look like the Virgin Mary wearing a knitted poncho and tie-dyed skirt.
5:20 – Hop onto a microbus headed into
Patan.
6:25 – Arrive at Thamel tourist bus park.
Ask most buses if they have tickets, but all are supposedly full.
6:30 – Very serious, frowny young man
shows me a full bus roster, then tells me to get on his bus (and presumably
pray that somebody is too hungover to claim their seat).
6:55 – Rising sun is bright enough to
illuminate my breath. Wrap poncho more tightly about my frame.
7:15 – After 45 minutes of a stress
headache and stomach cramps, dude asks me to pay for my ticket. More
instantaneous relief than extra strength Tylenol.
7:21 – Bus gets on its way. Nepali couple
across from me start playing Linkin Park’s “Numb” (coincidentally the only
Linkin Park song I know) without headphones.
The timeline
goes a little fuzzy here, because my Dramamine knocked me out for the rest of
the bus ride. At some point, the Nepali couple switched over to Miley Cyrus. I
also recall some American girl complaining about only getting two hot showers a
week. Oh, cry me a river.
2:00ish – Arrive in Sauraha bus park, where
I am overjoyed to see Ellen’s smiling face. Jeep brings us to the hotel.
2:15 – Hotel manager helps us to plan our
itinerary in the lovely sunny garden.
2:30 – Lunch, including pasta and French fries.
Would have been perfect, if not for the cat that showed up with a dead mouse.
It plopped down next to our table, and proceeded to eat the entire rodent in an
excruciating bone-crunching manner. I felt especially bad for Ellen, who’s
afraid of mice.
3:00 – Went for a walk with a hotel
guide. He wore a sweatshirt bearing the words “Welcome to the Jungle” with a
picture of a T-Rex. Did nothing to help my suspicions that we were actually in
Jurassic Park. We headed to the government elephant stables, where Ellen got to
give an elephant a treat. As gentle as tame elephants are, our guide warned us
how wild elephants were easily the most dangerous animals in the park. After that,
we headed to the riverbank, where we waited for the sunset. While waiting, we
saw several elephants, two rhinos, and one bear.
6:00 – Three interpretations of potato for dinner.
Maybe we shouldn't have said we were vegetarians.
7:00 – Dance show at the Tharu Cultural
Center. The Tharu are the ethnic group native to this part of the Terai (the
southern plains of Nepal). They are remarkable for having a natural immunity to
malaria. The dance show included a fire dancer and a man dressed in a peacock
costume.
Day 2 -
Best Told Straight
We awoke at 6:00,
ate a huge breakfast, and were out on the riverbank by seven. Everything was
enshrouded in mist. We could not see across the water to the jungle on the
other side. Beautiful, but eerie. We got into a long canoe and set off
downstream. The other canoes around us kept disappearing and reappearing.
Eventually, the rising sun began to burn away the fog, and we were able to see
many species of birds, and one sunbathing gharial crocodile.
Eventually,
our canoe made landfall, and Ellen and I departed, accompanied by two guides:
one close to our age, and the other a giddy older man with a purple scarf wound
around his head. Both carried heavy bamboo staves. As we walked, the latter
told us how he hoped we wouldn't encounter anything dangerous, because he was
unable to climb trees or run fast. Why? Because a mama bear broke his leg a few
months ago.
Luckily, we didn't see anything dangerous on our walk. We did see many tracks: rhino,
elephant, deer…and tiger. We also found fresh tiger scratches on a tree (for
marking territory), but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who you
ask), that was the closest we got to the king of the Nepali jungle.
Eventually,
we came upon the Elephant Breeding Center, home to many pregnant elephants and
many elephant babies. Did you know that it takes an elephant 22 months to carry
a pregnancy to term? AND their babies weight several hundred pounds at birth.
Apparently, full-grown Asian elephants (which are smaller than their African counterparts)
can weigh over 5 tons. That’s a whole lot.
Our
purple-scarfed guide must have eagle somewhere in his family tree, because he
grabbed Ellen and I and gestured excitedly towards the jungle. “See it? The
grey, by the tree?” Okay, mister, there’s
like fifty trees in that…holy crap! (my inner monologue)
The “grey”
was a bull elephant—a wild bull
elephant. The most dangerous animal in all of Chitwan. This guy was apparently
the father of one of the elephant calves we had seen, and he had quite an
attachment to the mother. I can’t even convey to you how quiet and stealthy he
was, because I doubt you’d believe a 10-foot tall, 10k pound animal can be stealthy,
but he was. He reminded me of my chubby poodle Luna (bear with me) slowly
stalking her sister at the food bowl. You’d stop looking for two seconds, and
he’d be several meters closer.
Eventually
he got too close for comfort, and the elephant keepers started throwing rocks
at him. Now, all tame elephants have their tusks trimmed, but this guy had the
full lethally sharp pair. If he had gotten mad (you know, at the rocks bouncing
from between his eyes), he would have unleashed hell upon the breeding center.
Since I’m typing this, you know that didn't happen. He went away.
After lunch
(no cats around this time!), we went on a jeep safari that we had decided to
add to our package. We crossed the river in a canoe and got into the open back
of a jeep with eight other tourists and a guide. Ellen and I quickly won over
the guide: Ellen because she speaks Nepali, and me because I kept singing a
catchy Hindi song under my breath.
Our guide
was great. He a wealth of information, with the eyes of a particularly
sharp-sighted raptor, and he shared some harrowing tales of his 11 years on the
job, which he started when he was only 19 (my brother’s age). He said he’d had
16 tiger spottings (stripings?) in those years, and only two of those
encounters were dangerous! He’d also been chased by rhinos, elephants, and
almost fatally mauled by a bear when his group abandoned him.
He helped us
spot monkeys, monitor lizards, peacocks and other large colorful birds, deer,
boars, and two species of crocodiles. We saw one peacock, tail fully open,
dancing the peacock mating dance that we had seen imitated by a human dancer
the night before.
We also
stopped by the gharial crocodile breeding center. Gharials are a kind of
crocodile with a long, thin snout. They’re pescatarians. The park is also home
to the much more dangerous marsh mugger crocodiles. It’s hard to be too
intimidated in a crocodile center when you’re there with Australians, though.
They kept on saying things like: “Ah, these guys got nothing on our crocs back
home.”
The jeep
safari was just as cool as you could hope. We drove over creaking bridges and
through streams. There was a sense of real urgency as we sped to get out of the
jungle before sunset. And when we drove past the towering impregnable groves of
elephant grass, I couldn't help but actually be afraid of what might be hiding
within the shadowy stalks. Remember Jurassic
Park: The Lost World? Stay out of the tall grass.
But I've saved the best for last! As we meandered out of the crocodile farm, our guide
ran towards us, beckoning for us to hurry into the jeep. “Rhino!” he was
saying. Once the jeep was loaded, we were off, tearing down the jungle road.
But it was worth our urgency. We pulled up behind another jeep that had stopped
right in front of a rhino calmly eating dinner on the side of the road.
Now, I know
what you’re thinking: Oh, I've seen
rhinos at the zoo. They’re not a big deal. Well, you've probably never seen
a Rhinoceros unicornis from ten feet
away with no fence in between. They are huge, prehistoric-looking creatures,
and it’s hard not to be intimidated by their grey, armored bulk, even while
peacefully grazing. There’s a big movement to protect Chitwan’s rhino
population from poachers, who kill the animals and sell their horns to Chinese
apothecaries (who believe it positively affects *ahem* male vitality). The park
is filled with army posts to dissuade poachers, and Sauraha, the village at the
jungle’s outskirts, has many signs stating that a rhino’s horn is not medicine.
Stay tuned for part 2, which will
detail our elephant safari—with pictures!
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