Elephant Escapades in Chitwan National Park
Chitwan National Park is Nepal's biggest nature reserve, covering 932 sq. km of swamps, grassland and dense jungle!
We arrived on Nov 6th, after taking a local bus to Tandi Bazaar and then walking 7km to Sauraha (a small village north of the park on the bank of the Rapti river). The main reason we walked all that way carrying all our bags under the midday sun was because when we arrived in Tandi we were almost bowled over by a mob of Nepalis trying to sell us their hotel/tour package. It was crazy, for about 15 minutes we had 15-20 men surrounding us, shoving their hotel brochures under our noses and screaming in our ears about what a good deal it was! Eventually we got so annoyed that we scorned all their offers of jeep/rickshaw rides in favour of our legs. When we finally arrived in Sauraha we almost cried as we saw all the hotel touts waiting for us there!! Luckily we managed to find a nice cheap riverside hotel despite the mob - one room with bathroom for Rs100 (about 20p each)!!
Over the next few days we did some more relaxing, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine and the quietness of nature (such a difference to the crazy streets of Thamel in Kathmandu). We found out about independant jungle tours and elephant rides, and also spent a day walking to the local elephant breeding centre. We arrived at about 4pm after Martin, Chris and I waded through the river (determined not to pay any fee for using the canoe). Emiko didn't want to get wet at all (I did have to do it in my panties as the water came up to my waist!) so she took the canoe, and only told us afterwards that it was free! Oh well, we definately gave the locals something to talk about anyway. The breeding centre was cool, it had about 20 elephants, all with babies ranging from a few months to over 2 years old. The babies were so cute, and we spent a few hours there trying to feed them fruit and stroking their strange leathery skin!
Mummy with two babies
On the 3rd day we searched for a new hotel as our cheap deal had turned rather nasty - the hotel boys were bugging us every few minutes, wanting us to take their tour of the park. We ended up walking further down the river away from Sauraha and finding a lovely quiet (if more expensive) place.
Once the hotel was found we got ready for our 2 day jungle trek. We left at 6:30am the next day with our 2 guides, ready to find some exciting animals! First came a canoe ride down the river, which was beautiful in the early morning mist. Then came the trekking. Our main guide, Bishnu, was great - he'd brought binoculars and a book of birds with him and every few minutes he stopped to show us another species (quite a twitcher!). That first day we saw crocodiles, barking deer, rhesus monkeys, wild boar and a one-horned rhino! The rhino was of course the most exciting animal we saw, and we were so lucky as later we met lots of other groups who went for 2 days without seeing one. Horray!
The nearly-extinct one-horned rhino
At about 5pm we reached the edge of the jungle (you have to leave by sunset) and took a canoe over the river to a little village where we spent the night. We were sweaty, hungry and tired and soon angery as the prices of everything (food, room, water...) were hugely inflated just because tourists have no other option. We ate our measly dinner quickly and were asleep by 8:30pm.
The next day we were up at 6am ready to go again, grumbling loudly after receiving 2 warm pieces of stale break as "breakfast". The first thing we did after getting back into the jungle was visit a crocodile breeding farm. At the farm they also had a beautiful bengal tiger in a big cage thing... I know - a cage! But they had a reason behind it - the tigers mother had taught her cubs to eat human flesh (eek!!) after attacking some locals near the park, and apparantly once a tiger tastes humans it won't go back to eating other animals so it was too dangerous for the park people to leave it wandering around. The mother and another cub died somehow, so they rescued this tiger when it was just a baby and have raised it ever since.
This second day was more grueling than the day before as we had longer to walk. I got really bad prickly heat on the back of my legs, as well as blisters, because my sweaty dirty socks were rubbing on my skin and the last few hours walking became pure agony! When we finally arrived back in Sauraha I was hobbling and almost in tears from the pain (over 40km in 2 days.... aargh!). When I took off my pants and socks for a shower that evening everyone was shocked.... my legs looked disgusting, red rash, blisters, bites etc. Nice.
The day after we got back we'd already planned a 2 hour ride through the jungle on an elephant (thank goodness no more walking for me!). We set off at about 4pm - with Chris, Emiko, Martin and I all squashed on a small platform on top of the elephants back. The elephant's driver (who works with the same elephant all its life) sat in front of us balancing on it's neck. We were with 2 other elephants and all their tourists (one especially annoying American woman was talking so loudly we knew we'd never see any exciting animals!) plodding through the undergrowth. Riding on an elephant is definately the most uncomfortable form of transport I've ever taken... the elie took such huge lumbering steps that our little platform lurched left to right, back to front, up and down... all we could do was cling on to the hand rests.
During the first hour we saw some deer and a wild boar, but it was during the second hour that things got interesting - we still don't know what happened but we're all pretty convinced that something spooked or angered our elephant.... she just suddenly started acting like a crazy thing - she was 'growling' (a kind of low grumble that I could feel with my feet through her skin) and refusing to walk forward. The driver started hitting her hard with a metal rod, which made us furious and Martin even asked him to stop... but he soon turned around and said "very danger danger", so that shut us up. He also made hand movements to show the elephant charging, and that got me even more worried! Soon the situation got even worse - our elie was actually charging through the jungle and trumpeting like crazy!! We had no idea what was going on, I just held on and prayed that we'd all make it back safely. She soon set off another elephant so there were two huge elephants growling and trumpeting and scaring the tourists they were carrying! At one point I managed to take a video when we were in the river and the sound was almost deafening! After a while the drivers managed to separate them, and while the other elephant lumbered off peacefully, ours was still upset about something. She started backing up the track and grabbing bushes with her trunk and throwing them in the air. It was all really scary. Luckily for us she did eventually calm down and we made it safely back to the town.
Now there's something you don't see/do everyday!!
Over the next few days we pretty much did nothing - just lazed about in the sun and read books. Marvellous. We did eventually do one more thing while we were there and that was washing an elephant. Sounds mad but it was so much fun!! Chris and I rode "Basanti" the elephant (bareback - the hair was really scratchy on our bare legs!) all the way down to the river and then into the water we went!!! Emiko and Martin joined in and soon we were all splashing about trying to stay on the elephants back while it played in the water. The driver would yell "Chhhop" and she would fill her trunk with water and spray us all!! Fun fun fun!
I can't say I was able to stand up like this, but I did manage sitting down on her back
After about 10 days at Chitwan, we finally decided to head to other parts of Nepal. We went to Gorkha, Bandipur, Pokhara, Lumbini and back to Kathmandu again. Will blog those adventures soon....
posted by Kate Harding @ 5:37 pm
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