Dear Everybody! Sorry for disappearing in the middle of the adventures, the truth is that living the last weeks of your time in Nepal and arriving home is not the calmest and easiest part of the adventure.
But don't worry, still I won't leave you without stories and pictures of this last period, to start again, here's a story of a trip in August in Chitwan National Park which is one of the world's very few still existing rainforests:
Chitwan National Park is one of the most famous
national parks of Nepal – maybe besides Annapurna Conservation Area which is most
famous with its trekking routes. As for Chitwan, it is a deep jungle area, with
rich wildlife and a wide variety of activities offered – form the elephant and
jeep safaris, to the canoeing on Rapti river and walking jungle tours as well.
Before having been there, I thought that this is a place which is 100%
touristic, but still I cannot leave Nepal without having some jungle
experience, too.
Well, it turned out that I wasn’t exactly
right, it wasn’t as touristic as I expected, instead I got to live some amazing
moments being almost alone in the middle of the jungle.
But starting it from the beginning: even
getting to Chitwan contained more adventure than I expected. Since I was trying
to save my remaining free days for a later holiday in Langtang, I decided to
leave for Chitwan just after I’m finished with teaching on Friday. This also
meant that a tourist bus wasn’t even an option since they only leave Kathmandu
in the morning... So finally I set off in the early afternoon to Kalanki from
where the microbuses to Chitwan were supposed to leave. I felt very fortunate
to instantly find a bus that was just leaving Kathmandu, supposedly to Chitwan.
At least that’s what I thought – until about 4 hours later the conductor
literally put me off the bus, saying that this is my last stop, and pushing me
in the arms of the taxi drivers. It was only at this time that I realized that
the microbuses don’t go directly to Sauhara village, which is the village by
the national park, instead they only approach Chitwan from about 25 km of
distance. From here, you have a few options to get to Sauhara, as I found out:
#1: You take a taxi: Well, the taxi drivers are
going to start at a price of 1500 Rs and won’t go under 800 Rs, for sure, even
if they find out that you are willing to stay at the guesthouse of their
friend. They will use any trick to get business of the desperate, lost
travellers, even telling that there’s no direct bus to Sauhara and it will take
you 3 hours to get there – but don’t believe them!
#2: You take a riksha: Ok the only problem with
this version is that there’s quite a chance that they will misunderstand your
destination, since you are willing to go too far. As for me, after getting rid
of the taxi drivers, I got on a riksha that promised me to take me to Sauhara
for 500 Rs. I thought ok, this might be a fun experience to try. It was only
after one corner that it turned out that he had no idea of where I was going
to, so he tried to ask for the help of some people passing by and when he
realized that it was kinda far where I was heading to, he just offered me to
take to the bus station. Since by this time I was already pretty furious about
it that everybody only saw the business in me, I left him there without paying
anything – about which though I felt a little guilty later.
#3: Just simply cross the road where you are
dropped off from the micro and take a direct public bus – which in fact exists
and which will take you to the village in about half an hour, just for 30 Rs!
Anyway, after facing all these challenges I
finally arrived in the village of Sauhara by the evening, where there were
already a few owners of guesthouses waiting for the late-coming tourists to
offer them their accommodation. Luckily by this time I was already prepared:
two guesthouses were suggested for me by my friends, who have been there before
– these were called “Crocodile” and “Butterfly”. So at this point I just tried
to stop the locals, all talking at the same time and offering me better and
better options and asked for these places and finally I got lucky: the owner of
“Butterfly” was there, so he offered to take me to his really pretty and calm
guesthouse, where a quite cheap room (only 300 Rs) was waiting for me, even
with a terrace and a beautiful garden in front of it.
Still this evening I had another job to do: I
had to book all kinds of programs for the following day. For this again, I got
an advice before: I was told not to book anything at the hotel, but to go to an
agency, instead. So this is what I did and booked a nice all-day-long jungle
walk for the next day, which actually turned out to be a private tour just for
me, with two guides since there were no other tourists for that day. At the
same time, my future tour guide was so nice that he even took me to a little
bit injured rhino close to the agency. He said that since it was injured, it
cannot go back to the jungle, because other rhinos might kill him, so that’s
why he is just wandering near the village. Later, I got to see a show
presenting the traditional culture, dances and dresses of the people of the
area, called Tharus. At the end of the event, even the audience could take part
and learn some of the dances as well.
When I went to bed after this long day, I
didn’t know yet, what kind of adventures were waiting for the next day. I got
up early in the morning, got breakfast in the cosy local restaurant just by the
guesthouse – tasty Tibetan bread, yammyyy!
- just to meet in time with my two guides, ready for the trip.
We started the adventure with getting into a
huge canoe, carved from just one piece of giant tree and canoeing down the
Rapti river that was eventually supposed to be full of crocodiles. They said,
that two types of crocodiles were living there – only one of which could be
dangerous for people since the other one doesn’t really eat meet, if I understood
well. Although finally we didn’t see any crocodiles, but the thought of them
already increased my adrenalin level a little bit... But the real Jurassi Park
only started after getting out of the canoe: It was only at this point, where
you already have no chance to turn back, when I was told, what kind of animals
we might meet when walking in the jungle and what the adequate reaction to them
should be. For example in case if we should be attacked by a rhino, we should
either climb a tree, or start running in zig-zag, because due to their huge
weight, they cannot turn very fast. Also, it turned out that the most dangerous
animal in the jungle is a wild elephant. Since throughout the years they have
been socialized to be afraid of the humans, it’s pretty likely that they are
going to attack... Also, to me surprise, I got to know that contrary to common knowledge, tigers are not so dangerous at the
same time, they are known here as pretty shy animals – that’s why they cannot
be seen very often – but if we meet one, we just have to look in his eye and
the we can take our shots. After getting to know all these information, I was
desperately trying to remember all of them, hoping that my memory would still
work in the case of an incident. During the day, sometimes walking in the deep
jungle, I continuously felt who small I am compared to the nature and all these
creatures, watching in all direction all the time, not knowing in which moment
a huge rhino would appear by us. Finally I got to see three rhinos during the
day, and a few deer and monkeys, too. Fortunately, none of them attacked us.
Two of the rhinos were peacefully having a baths in a pond or in the river.
Spotting the third one was already a bit more adventures experience: since it
was just in the bushes, it wasn’t too safe just to approach him on the ground,
so finally I had to climb high up on a tree, while I was told not to make too
much noise, since if the rhino would hear us and get mad, it could still try to
hit the tree to get us down from there.
By the end of this long day, I was already so
tired that I was falling in my bed already around 8 pm. Having also booked an
elephant safari and planned an elephant bath as well, the next morning still
new experiences were waiting for me. Although the elephant safari was said to
be not so interesting regarding the wildlife, we still saw quite a few deer
from pretty close, besides that it was a really memorable experience to be
sitting in a small basket on the top of the huge animal, while the elephant was
walking in a way that I thought all the time that I might fall down at the next
step.
Later, when the elephants arrived back after
this “morning walk”, it was time for them to have a bath in the river. In this
ritual, for a small amount of money (100 Rs) tourists can take part, too: you
can get a chance, to get on the bare back of the elephant, who is going to give
a nice shower to you by pouring water on you with his trunk, and at the end, he
is going to sit down to let you fall into the water. I know that in a way this
is all using the animal just for your fun, but despite that, just feeling this
huge animal so close to you, playing together with it, was just an experience that I still couldn’t
miss and that I will remember for a long-long time!
Maybe knowing a bit Nepal, I don’t even need to
say, that after this great weekend in Chitwan, getting back to Kathmandu was an
adventure, too: since the tourist buses again, left in the morning, I only had
the local options, to take. I was told that several local buses pass by Sauhara
Chowk that are going to Kathmandu. Here the first challenge was to get to
Sauhara Chowk – the same place where I was dropped from the bus the other day,
but it was actually about 6 km from the guesthouse. Although walking that
distance shouldn’t have meant a problem, but since I was kinda in shortage of
time, I was advised to take a local bus there that should pass by in our
street. Of course there was no timetable or anything like that..:) I decided to
have a final lunch in my favourite local restaurant in the street. Here I was
just in the middle of a conversation with an interesting Danish guy who was
planning to stay in Chitwan for long term, when we saw the bus passing by, so
my lunch and conversation ended in a fast run after the bus, while I though
some money for my lunch and was waving to the bus at the same time. But
finally, I managed, I was on the bus an d soon arrived to the chowk. Here,
after getting to know in which corner I was supposed to be waiting for the bus
to Kathmandu, I started asking all the buses, but none of them were heading to
the capital. I started to get a little worried, so I asked an also waiting
policemen, who of course didn’t speak any English, but assured me in Nepali
that there were some buses from here to Kathmandu. He stayed with me for about
another 15 minutes, soon already in the company of another policeman, until
finally they stopped a bus for me in the middle of the road and said that it
was the right one for me. Since it was literally a very local bus, absolutely
crowded, I spent about the first 5 minutes of the trip hanging outside the open
door, the next one our standing in the crowd, after which the conducer asked
two smaller size men to squeeze a bit together and provide me at least a quarter
of a seat.
Now, actually writing about these experiences
about 3 months later, I miss so much all these adventurous, crazy moments, the
challenges of everyday life or the challenges of getting from one place to
another, when you never know what is going to happen and how, you only know
that at the end everything is going to turn out good. You cannot get bored or
lazy, you just need to be open for all these small surprises that Nepal has to
offer you...
Tharu dance show representing the original culture of the people in Chitwan
So this is the view that you can meet during the elephant safari
But if you want some more adrenalin, take part in the whole-day-long jungle safari to meet these rhinos from not more than 2 meter of distance!
Or follow a tiger! Yes, this is really his foot print!
And be prepared to climb a tree to be able to stay close to a rhino like this!
This is how the elephant safari really looks like!
And yeah! I even took part in the elephant shower! :)