Volunteering in Nepal: So Let's Continue with Chitwan National Park

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...