Royal Chitwan Park

After gaining some speed and confidence riding the bikes without any major problem to Bhandipur, we decided to further endeavour to the Terai region in the South, to Royal Chitwan National Park. We got almost at ease with the traffic and road conditions: you ought to blow the horn if overtaking someone, because they do not hear you nor look into the mirror; buffaloes, cows, suicidal chicken and dogs have rights over all other vehicles, though if you beep to them they mostly follow the left hand rule - yeah, I forgot to mention that there is left hand rule in Nepal. You can imagine a couple of funny traffic situations when Rita insisted driving on the right lane despite of a bus coming ... The scenery was marvellous, though we had to concentrate hard on the in the road or not rarely fight our way through rocks where all of a sudden without notice the road ended - then a couple of meters later it continued due to land slides or stone avalanches. Anyway, after 4-5 hours of riding we ended up on dirt roads taking over elephants and we understood that we must have arrived to Sauraha, a small village next to the park, where we planned to accommodate ourselves for a couple of days.

We found the best accommodation we ever had during our trip with very helpful and friendly hosts and after a cool shower and some food we sat back on the bikes to ride to the Elephant Breeding Center to watch baby elephants. Soon we became the main attraction, when Tomek decided one cookie is enough for the not that small baby elephant and the baby started chasing him all around the yard, Tomek running in the front of the elephant which was attempting to catch the bag of cookies with its' trunk. When understanding that all the tourists are laughing at him and the cookies will not be his, the baby got so offended that later did not want to accept the cookies even from Rita...

Nevertheless we got so much into the elephant idea that next morning we decided to participate the elephant bathing at the river, where the village elephants go for a bath every day following their morning work. This would be already enough of an attraction, but the real fun starts when you join them and they play with you. I do not think I am able to describe better than the photos the fun of sitting on the back of an elephant who is giving you a shower with its' trunk full of water and than goes down on all four knees and puts you under water. To finish with they let you wash them (with a piece of rock), being petted, lying on their sides, completely exposed and enjoying. Not much different from what the tourists are going through - becoming children for a few hours forgetting all about themselves.

Quite exhausted after 2 hours we headed to our jeep safari to the jungle, where we saw crocodiles, rhinoceroses - one of them started chasing our jeep with a not too friendly intention, a python, all kinds of birds and termite homes, a captured baby tiger who became a human flesh gourmet together with her mom and two siblings killing a dozen of villagers before being hunted down. Next morning we enrolled for a 2 hours elephant ride in the jungle, which was quite an experience; if you expect a joyride, forget it. It is shaky, you have to cling hard to the small box 4 of us were seated in not to fall and constantly watch for branches hitting your head, as surprise surprise you travel as high as the top of the smaller trees. We were disappointed how the elephants were treated by the drivers who, often were pinching their skin so hard that it was bleeding, but we learned also amusing things, like that they understand 40 to 5o Hindi words, how silently they walk, that they go through basically anything from thick forest to rivers and their fellows in the forest do not run away despite of us sitting on the top. We witnessed a rhino cooling in a mud pond right next to us not moving even the ear when we passed by.

To make our stay more exciting Rita's bike broke down a couple of times leaving us in-between two villages on a dirt road, but after being able to maneuver through some 30 cows on the road we acquired a liking of the feeling that if anything can happen everything will do eventually happen. :)))

P.S.: Did you know that lizards in Nepal speak to each other? That they give a sound similar to a bird singing and can walk up-side-down on the ceiling?