Chitwan National Park

There is a blog under this one that was written before it but not posted until now.
Another interesting bus ride

Saturday, March 276:20am. Wake up
7am. Check out of hotel and hurry to bus station because the bus is suppose to leave at 7:15

7:15: step out of taxi and right away there’s someone asking me where I’m going, I say Chitwan National Park. I don’t think he understands so I say it again.

Now he takes me to the bus ticket window and says something to the man behind the steel bars and then he brings me too the bus that hopefully will go by Chitwan. So with no ticket I get on the bus (they will collect money later) so I made the bus, except it sits in the parking lot trying to get onto the highway for 30 minutes or so. By 8:30 we’ve maybe gone 10km, now I’m thinking-this is going be a really long bus ride and I should have ate breakfast although not many places are open very early. By about 11am I’m starting to think I’m going the right way because I’m seeing signs that I should be(according to lonely planet) Then it’s 11:30 and I think this bus isn’t going the right way because there’s a sign for Pokhara and that’s west of Kathmandu( I should be going south)
I ask some kid on the bus and he thinks I’m going to wrong way because this bus is going to Sunauli which is on the border of India and Nepal. Now I’m thinking “okay well I guess I’m going to Sunauli, oh well. However the bus stops so people can go to the bathroom and I ask someone else and he says my stop is the next one. Well that’s good, so in about 10 minutes they drop me off on the side of the road and point to another bus and tell me to get on that one. I do that and it’s just a local bus and I’m the only white person, also the only person over 5’9. The people are very nice and even move out of the way so I can have a seat(the bus was packed) I take this bus for about 15 minutes and then they drop me off and point to a horse rickshaw. I guess I have to take that now, they tell me I’m suppose to take a horse rickshaw 7km south to get to the park, this was pretty fun and after about 30 minutes I was at the lodge, I was staying Chitwan Tiger Camp. Apparently there’s a tourist bus to Chitwan and a local bus, I took the local bus which isn’t as direct but it’s cheaper. Anyway I made it too the park after 7 hours of traveling.





I went to the elephant breeding center shortly after I got to the lodge; it was not the best way to see elephants but still it fun to see them. It was feeding time when I was there and they really like their grass balls, they have something inside the ball that makes it like candy for the elephant.

On Sunday morning I took a canoe ride down the river and then a jungle walk, a jungle walk is exactly what it sounds like. There’s 2 guides with bamboo sticks incase the animals charge the tourists. They aren’t allowed to carry guns. We saw a rhino sitting down in the bush so that made the walk worth it; we also saw some monkeys playing in the trees. After the jungle walk I took a shower with the elephants in the water, it was the best thing I’ve done on the trip so far. I climbed on the back to the elephant and then the instructor guy got the elephant to spray me with water from his trunk. After this he got the elephant to sit down in the water with me on him and then stand back up. Then the elephant started to shake like crazy, trying to get me off his back (instructed to due so) well that worked because I fell off his back. It was so fun. I don’t have any pictures of me on him because I didn’t trust anyway with my camera.

The next day I went on a jeep safari for about 4 hours and fairly deep into the park, I was hoping to see a tiger but there aren’t many around anymore. 2 reasons for that: Poaching and a big monsoon season in 2003. Because of the poaching there is the Nepal army in the park with machine guns at different checkpoints. The park itself is about 932 square km and is controlled by the Nepalese government. In 2003 during the monsoon season the water was very high in the park, higher then normal. This caused a mud slide and killed quite a few of the animals either by drowning them or them being stuck in the mud. So there aren’t many tigers or wild elephants in the park. It seems like there are quite a few rhinos though and they are really cool. I have pictures of them but I’ll put them up later since this internet got slow.

Well that’s all I got about Chitwan Nation Park. Tomorrow I’m headed to Pokhara and will stayed there for a while because I’m going to do the best thing ever: Parahawking
It’s like paragliding except they have trained to hawks to land on your arm while you glide around the mountains; I’m doing this on Friday.