Royal Chitwan National Park

Killing time waiting for the visas meant a good chance for a side trip to the Terai region of Nepal. Thankfully the strikes were halted and travel was readily available and safe. Perhaps a good week of negotiations between the Maoists and the gov? We get on this old decrepit bus and wind up in Chitwan 7 sweaty hours later. It was hard to choose a place as we were horded by touts at the bus station and since all hotels contain these 3 words: Jungle, Adventure, and Lodge. We wound up at a place right next to the river with excellent views of the elephants walking by. On our first day at Chitwan, we decided to rent bikes and check out the elephant breeding center. We will post photos but I will have you know that the 5 month old twins were to die for. After a painful and bumpy ride down a stone road back to town, we waited for dinner with some thoroughly sore asses. And by wait for dinner I mean go through 3 drinks, leave the restaurant, get snacks at the bakery, eat them, play a card game or 2, then eat dinner. Not sure of the reason but Chitwan had the slowest service EVER. We called it a night and got up bright and early for an elephant safari. We show up and see that all of the elephants are standing in a straight line with their mahouts and find out that they are on strike. One of the mahouts got in a fight with his boss so the boss decided it was appropriate to hit him. The president of the elephant association showed up and apologized at which point the strike had ended. We jumped onto our elephant and were off for a 2 hour safari adventure. Because we were on elephant back, other animals were very tolerant giving us the chance to come within feet of Indian one-horned Rhinos. Unfortunately, we were the perfect height to get smacked in the face by all the diseased tree branches we were walking through. Yuck. Photos are not updated but check back soon for the great rhino pics.

We got back into town and decided to head to the river to help "bathe" the elephants, and by bathe I mean sit on an elephants back while getting splashed with water from their trunks. I believe this is the best part of the day for both elephant and mahout...they get to drench those crazy enough to accept the offer to climb atop the elephant in the river. After countless shouts of "Chooooppppp!" and getting completely drenched in a mixture of river water and elephant spit, the mahout orders the gentle giant to lay down in the river leaving us to swim our way to safety. M was gung ho on helping to bathe an elephant, but her inquiries resulted in confused mahouts. There clearly was no bathing going on, but it was good fun. In the afternoon we went on a Jeep safari so we could get further into the various habitats of the national park for some good wildlife spotting. We saw too many rhinos to count as well as peacocks, mugger crocodiles, various species of deer, tons of waterfowl, storks, kingfishers, wild buffalo, wild elephants and wild boars. The heat sweeping across the plains of southern Nepal got us itching to leave and after another SLOW dinner and buggy night in Chitwan, we headed back onto the sweaty bus for the ride back to Kathmandu.