Chitwan
Before starting at the Pokhara orphanage I took a weekend trip to the Chitwan National Park. The park consists of over 900 square kilometres of jungle, grassland and river and is located on the plains of the Terai region, in the south of Nepal. It boasts significant populations of wild elephants, tigers, rhinos, crocodiles, rare gangetic dolphins and over 500 species of bird. The park is a major tourist destination and there are a number of resorts and hotels in the area. The more expensive resorts are located deep within the park itself and own their own elephants for safari. These places charge over $200 US a night, though in the off season this drops dramatically, or the resorts close until after monsoon. I had booked a 3-day package deal with a hotel just outside the park that would include the usual safari and jungle activities and paid just over $100 US.
Pastry-boys. Bakery goods for sale at the Pokhara bus stand for tourists bleary-eyed from the early start.
The bus trip took about 5 hours and was uneventful, at least by Nepal standards (inching over slip-damaged bridges and near-misses with trucks and livestock don’t count), and we were met at the Sauraha bus park by the usual horde of hotel staff and taxi drivers. I had pre-booked my hotel and activities to save a bit of time and hassle, but you could certainly pick up some bargain accommodation if you didn’t mind a bit of haggle and dealing with the roiling pack of touts.
I located my hotel representative and was whisked away in a jeep, arriving at the Shiva’s Dream Hotel a few minutes later. I was met at the gate by a young man, full of smiling politeness, and escorted up the path to my room. The 4-story building was a bit dilapidated and ominously quiet – more like Shiva’s Idle Musing, I thought – and I asked the porter how many guests were here. His smile widened and he replied, “Just you, sir”. Bugger. Travelling on one’s own can be a lonely affair at times, but being the only guest at a hotel is downright depressing. I was slightly cheered when he added, “Another guest is coming later”.
Looking down from the roof of Shiva’s Dream. I had been hoping for a few lounging handmaidens, but Shiva is apparently quite a chaste Dreamer.
Looking out over the Chitwan National Park.
I sorted my room out and went up to the roof-top dining room for lunch. Then it started to rain. The rain I had experienced in Kathmandu was what I had expected during a monsoon. Despite being forewarned, Pokhara had surprised me with its downpours and how quickly the streets had flooded, but this jungle deluge was unbelievable. It was like someone had upturned a swimming pool over the hotel. The tin roof of the dining room made conversation nigh-on impossible. The young porter doubled as the waiter, and being the only guest I thought I should get on a first-name basis with him, so I asked him his name, both of us shouting to be heard over the thunderous rain.
“MY NAME IS BLUEBEARD”.
“PARDON?”
“MY NAME IS RHUBARB”
“ER… RUPERT?”
“YES! RUPAK!”
“AH. NICE TO MEET YOU, RUPAK!”
Rupak is 17 years old and works as the hotel porter, waiter and apprentice guide. He is also working very hard on his first moustache. Now, if only I could find the bar…
A few minutes later the rain had eased (mercifully) and the hotel guide, Nabin, who had met me off the bus, came to discuss the itinerary. He brought with him a bottle of coke, placing it ceremoniously before me and announcing that this was my ‘welcome drink’. Well, I was on a budget. I guess the cocktail with the bits of fruit and the little umbrella was expecting too much. He sat down and wrote out a schedule for the next two days, explaining that the cost of all meals and activities was included in my package. He then carefully printed, in capital letters, “BAR BILL EXTRA!”. I told myself that he does this for all guests, but perhaps he recognised the type.
The first activity was a walking tour of the village, taking in the government elephants and park ranger station and ending at the Rapti river for a view of the sunset. The second hotel guest had arrived by now, so at least I had some company.
The government-owned elephants used by rangers for patrolling the park.
The Rapti river.
Er… a beer.
That evening, after dinner, we attended a cultural show by the indigenous inhabitants of the Chitwan region, the Tharu. The show, which took place in a local hall and was attended by tourists from all the local hotels, consisted of a number of traditional dances. These included ’stick dances’ displaying the traditional fighting styles, a peacock dance and a funeral dance, all accompanied by an ensemble of traditional instruments. I had just remarked to my companion on the notable absence of any female dancers, when the next number began with the entrance of a young man wearing a swirling skirt, his long hair in pig-tails. He danced enthusiastically and with skill, but I couldn’t help but notice a certain air of grim determination, as if his patience was wearing thin. (I imagined the back-stage arguments amongst the troupe as to whose turn it was to play the girl that night. “But I always play the girl! I’m sick of it!” “Then get a hair cut. You big girl.” “Right, Ranjit, that’s it! Hold me back! Hold me back!“). Indeed, the dance being over, the announcer referred to it as the ‘lady-boy’ dance. Apparently Tharu women aren’t allowed to dance. The show ended with the usual invitation to the audience to make complete pratts of themselves by participating, and fortunately there were enough guileless Japanese present to take up the challenge and spare the rest of us the awkward embarrassment of having a fist-fight with a costumed dancer who is trying to drag you on-stage.
A Chitwan taxi stand.
Preparing to embark on safari.
The following day began with an elephant safari. (How cool is that?) Sitting in the wood-and-canvas box atop an elephant is not the most comfortable of rides – you wouldn’t want to commute to work, say – but it affords a terrific view and an elephant is the ultimate all-terrain vehicle. Once you get used to the rolling gait, it is also quite peaceful. We traversed streams, swamp, forest and grassland; all at a steady yet sedate pace. It became apparent that the wildlife are a lot more tolerant of elephants than noisy vehicles or people. We got very close to a number of deer and birds, which I’m sure would have bolted at the first sound of a roaring jeep or me stumbling through the bush on my own. We brushed aside the spider webs and small branches; if we encountered anything larger at an inconvenient height a quick command from the mahout sent a curling trunk around the obstacle and it was tossed aside. Try that with a quad-bike. The highlight of this sojourn was the spotting of two wild rhinos. They were having a rest in the shade of some bush, but we were able to get incredibly close and they didn’t seem perturbed by the elephant at all. Eventually they got up and wandered away and we continued our amble. We didn’t get to see any tigers, but given that the territorial area of a tiger is about 50 square kilometres, that wasn’t surprising.
View from the back of an all-terrain elephant.
Two rhino arses.
Doe. A deer. A female deer.
At about 11am we went down to the river to take part in the elephant baths. I stripped down to my togs and was immediately presented with an elephant offering me a bended knee on which to clamber up. A quick and completely graceless scramble later and I was driving my own elephant. (Well, to be fair, the elephant was following its mahout and I don’t suppose it took any notice whatsoever of my pulling and prodding, but it felt like I was driving). We sauntered into the river and moments later I had my first faceful of water and elephant snot. What followed was a half-hour of trunk-drenchings and sudden dumpings as the mahout encouraged his mount to get me as wet as possible. The elephant seemed to get into the spirit of it and I’m pretty sure a lot of the spraying was un-prompted. On command, the elephant flopped onto her side and I was handed a piece of pumice. Time to scrub. Getting so close to a beast like this was simply incredible. They are massive animals and it was fascinating to inspect one at such close range. I’ve scrubbed behind an elephant’s ears and lain on its tum, listening to a huge and ponderous heart-beat. Awesome. For her part, the elephant obviously enjoyed this play-time as much as me. She lay content, face completely submerged, pink-tipped trunk occasionally appearing above the water, like a periscope, as if to inspect the work going on. After I had scrubbed both sides to her satisfaction, the elephant arose and I clambered up her trunk by gripping her ears (something I was a little hesitant to do at first. Grabbing something that big by the ears runs contrary to some deep sense of self-preservation). A couple of final sprayings and we climbed up the river bank, bath-time done.
Who needs a mahout? There’s nothin’ to it…
…until your ride decides to dump you.
Fed up with being soaked? There’s only one way to head-butt an elephant. The key lies in getting a really good grip on the ears…
After lunch we embarked on a canoe ride and jungle walk. The sky hung thick with dark clouds and thunder rumbled ominously, but this just seemed to add to the atmosphere. I mean, the only way paddling a dug-out canoe up a crocodile infested jungle river could be any cooler is if thunder is tolling like a drum beat overhead. Our guide pointed out examples of the local species of crocodile, the marsh mugger (charmingly named by the colonial British as they watched villagers get dragged to a watery death, probably while sipping pink gin. The British I mean, not the villagers. They were just doing their laundry). There was one basking not 50m from where we had been swimming with the elephants.
A basking marsh mugger, looking for an old lady or an asian at an ATM.
A rare Black-Fronted Frog Guzzler. (No, that’s naughty. I made that up, sorry. Fake ornithology is a little hobby of mine).
A Snowy River Wrangler, completey lost.
We disembarked at the edge of an expanse of tall elephant grass and set off on foot with Nabin and Rupak as our guides. We were walking along a well-worn path and I was trying to recall something I had read about the extreme inadvisability of using the tracks of certain wild animals, but I couldn’t remember whether it had been rhinos or hippopotami that the author had been referring to, when Nabin paused and indicated a pile of dung. “Rhino shit”, he said, simply. We moved on. Shortly thereafter Nabin stopped and pointed to another giant turd. “Elephant shit”. He then gave the pile a few exploratory prods with his walking stick. “Wild elephant shit”, he expanded. Nabin went on to explain how one could tell the difference – a matter of salt in the diet, apparently – and then described the fascinating toilet habits of both elephants and rhinos. I had to hand it to him – the man knew his shit. A little while later I heard a single, distant snort, away to our right. Nabin paused and cocked his head. “Elephant”, he pronounced. “Domestic”. Now that was impressive. It sounded to me like a European tourist with a smoker’s cough (why do they all smoke?) and I remained skeptical until, minutes later, an elephant, straddled by a mahout and accompanied by its baby, strolled out of the grass ahead of us.
Elephant Mum and baby.
We soon left the grassland and entered a forest. As we moved through a sparse patch of trees we heard another guttural cough from the bushes ahead. Nabin stopped dead in his tracks and then began walking slowly backwards. “Rhino”. He suddenly seemed a bit tense, and since Nepali people are normally about as tense as hippies at a hydroponics convention, we got tense along with him and moved back. He indicated for us to remain back while he went ahead to check it out. He did so and returned to explain that he had determined where the rhino was and which way it was heading, and we could follow him to see it. I wondered if he had worked all this out by examining any shit. We crept up with Nabin and lo! A wild rhino, crossing our path within spitting distance. Well, spitting distance if you had a decent tail-wind, and maybe a bit of a run up. Close enough, anyway, to remind me that I was not perched 2 metres up on the back of an elephant and make me glance around and note the position of the nearest scaleable tree. Incredible. We watched it shamble past and slowly disappear into the foliage, pausing occasionally to snuffle and twitch it’s scarred flanks. After it had moved out of earshot, we all grinned at each other and shook our heads in disbelief. Even Nabin seemed excited. “Did you see?” He asked, as if I had spent the last two minutes fumbling in my camera bag. Yep, I saw, and it was awesome.
A wild rhino crossing our path. Wild, I say.
Our walk concluded at the elephant breeding centre, where we viewed a display about the park’s elephants – including some startlingly frank facts about their reproduction, complete with pictures – and then got to meet the newest members of the herd. Baby elephants are very cute, and I can’t quite work out why. Maybe it’s just because they look like miniature elephants, scuttling along beside their Mum in that cliched baby elephant walk. Or perhaps it’s because they seem prematurely old, with their wiry hair and excess folds of wrinkled skin that they haven’t grown into yet. Whatever it is, they are a lot of fun. There were 6 or 7 juvenile elephants present with their mothers. Once they had overcome their shyness they were inquisitive and playful and I was laughingly patting and fending off several slobbery trunks at once. Imagine a 200kg puppy with a really long, wet nose. Great fun.
Baby elephant enjoying a good scratch.
A nursing elephant at the Elephant Breeding Centre.
Dumbo Jnr snacking on ‘elephant momos’ - a mixture of rice, salt and molasses wrapped in grass. Mmmm. Like I say, everyone loves a momo party!
Rupak with a baby elephant.
An elephant using grass to keep flies away from her sleeping baby. Awwww…
The next day we walked to the local Tharu village where Nabin described the culture and explained a bit of the history. I didn’t have the heart to pull out my camera, as I felt uncomfortably like a gawking tourist and this was these people’s home. Thankfully we didn’t invade anyone’s actual house. Afterwards I packed and, after paying my BAR BILL, took a wee horse drawn cart to the bus park for my ride back to Pokhara.
As we sat in the sweltering heat of the bus, it became apparent that the engine wasn’t turning over. Next, the driver asked us to disembark and help him push-start the bus. The bus was sitting in a slight depression and we couldn’t get her rolling, despite several attempts. I then stood back and watched as the driver and a couple of helpers jacked up the rear of the bus, dug the rocks away from the rear wheels and tied a rope around the axle. They then wound the rope by turning the rear wheels, and it dawned on me what they were doing. They were going to pull-start a bus. I couldn’t miss out on this, so I joined the 5 guys holding the rope and we hauled away with all our might. No luck. We rewound the rope and tried again, shifting a couple of nearby jeeps that were blocking our path. Still no good. By now I had been promoted to the end of the rope and our informal teamwork was improving. On the sixth attempt the bus gave a belch of smoke and roared into life. There were mutual grins and back-slaps amongst the tuggers as the other passengers burst into applause. Good fun, but hot work in the humidity and jungle heat, and just one of the joys of transport within Nepal. We piled aboard and it was back to Pokhara. The trip to Chitwan had been a terrific experience and definitely a highlight that will stay with me for years to come.
