Royal Chitwan National Park

Hello! I have spent the last few weeks studying Hindi, teaching English, and volunteering at an NGO in the Himalayan region of northern India. Needless to say, where I am staying, the internet is sparse. Please stay tuned to the blog if you want though, because I have many things to write about and I will find time such as today or after December while I travel, to post everything. Thanks for hanging with me!

Excerpt from my travel journal September 23, 2006

Taking an early morning train from Pokhara to Chitwan, I arrived in the afternoon at teh small village, Sahaura, outside the nearly 1000 square km park. I had no reservations for the night and was offered a ride to a hotel for free if I ended up staying for 100 Rs. A short motorbike ride later, I found myself at the Chilax House a short walk away from the Rapti river which acts as a border to the massive national park.

That night I ate in the small kitchen/dining groom which has one table and a candle which dimly illuminated my dinner of dhal and rice. Later that night a German man came to the hotel and he somehow knew the manager. The man makes documentaires in Nepal and is a little ecentric. I asked him questions about his trade and how he got started as I am thoroughly interested and considering the idea of making documentaries myself. I got his card for later reference.

The next morning I began my 3 day 4 night package at a larger resort-like hotel. Usually I would never buy a package deal from a travel agency, but when in Pokhara I calculated the money I would spend at Chitwan and the proposed package included everything and more and was the same price. If I could do it again, I'd come and pay everything separately for a few reasons.

First, the resorts are owned by wealthy businessmen from Kathmandu while the smaller hotels are locally run and money is funneled directly into the local economy. Next, the actual value wasn't that great. The price was so cheap because its the low season - I was the only person at the resort for half the time. The food was all provided and included in the price, but was of poor quality for the price and I often left the dining room still hungry for more.

Lastly, I was severely put ff by the atmosphere of the resort. My first night at the Chilax house, I spoke to the manager as nearly equals, but at the resort I was treated like a superior, a rich guest to please but not be friendly with. This makes it hard to relate or try to make friends. The sterile treatment made me uncomfortable my entire stay. This is where I got my Nepali nickname (see future post).

Th first full day in the park I went on a jungle walk inside the park boundaries. We rode a canoe downriver for about a half hour. The water was high, brown and moving fast since the monsoon was just tapering off in the last couple weeks and rains still pelted the ground in the late afternoons.

Unfortunately we didnt cross paths with any crocodiles- neither the long, narrow mouthed gharial nor the potentially man eating mugger- but saw a myriad of birds as we drifted quickly down the heavy current steered only by a young man with a long bamboo ple like a Venetian gondola driver.

Finding shore on the far bank, we entered the jungle on foot, prepared to walk back to even with our starting point- only a couple hours away. My first time in a tropical ocean of green waves bursting with life, I walked in awe staring at the canopies the ground and all that laid between.

Red insects the size and shape of clothespins scurried across the soil outnumbring mammals millions to one. We stopped to observe monkeys playing overhead in the tall trees and they in turn paused their games to sit and observe us. Green ive-covered clearings transformed to lush thickets of green and brown which then gave way to grasslands which at this time of year were 8 foot high, dense walls of brown grasses, obstructing view of any animals nearby.

Stopping at a lookout tower to peer out over the area, I met three young English and Swedish women who were in medical school in Europe and working in a hospital in Kathmandu for a month. The walk continued for a bit further before we once again emerged from the jungle at the river bank and awaited our canoe back across the water.

That night a few more guests were staying at the resort since it was a weekend and we a piled into the back of a jeep- which I helped push start- and headed to a cultural dance show. The Tharu people were the first to colonize the Terai region, the plains of southern Nepal. They have their own language, way of village life, and I’ve heard they have developed an immunity to malaria, although it’s almost non existent there now.

In a small theater with long benches stretching wall to wall broken only by a small aisle, tourists from all over were brought by their hotel, or came independently, to watch the show. A goofy four-eyed skinny Nepalese man with a large adam’s apple and oscillating voice introduced each song which were then performed by a small band of older men playing drums and singing while a group of young Tharu male dancers shuffled around in a circle, dancing their traditional dances using sticks t hit together in loud, fast violent movements that looked like the rural Nepalese representation of Stomp.

Every week or so, members of the audience are brought up on stage to dance in a circle with the dance team. When this was announced, I was really excited and decided immediately that I had t dance, and though I’d get the invitation because I was sitting on the aisle. When a man made his way down to me and said something like, “you dance?” I nonchalantly made a show of considering it a surprise and got up, although in my head I wanted to run up to the stage.

For a long 10 minute song, I tried to emulate the quick-footed, experienced young man on my left whose grace was far greater than mine, and it didn’t help that I was a foot taller that he. But regardless of how much I stood out, I did my best t keep my body in motion, knees bent, arms flailing, smile fixed on my face. I let if flow and I was successfully keeping up with the dancers who made up most of the circle as I looked near the end. Most tourists had fallen out of the circle, and few were still dancing, and I was by far the tallest and the whitest.

Sweaty but exhilarated by my performance, I dropped off the stage as the evening was over and everyone was filing out to their hotel’s respective jeeps. A British woman who was staying the weekend at my resort congratulated me on my free dancing and all I could think to answer was, “How often do I get to dance with indigenous Nepalese villagers?”

The next morning I finally got to fulfill one of my deep desires for my trip to Nepal. I got to ride an elephant. By now I had seen elephants walking along he roads, tied up in privately owned stables and at the government sponsored breeding center.

Dropped off at the edge of the outlying forest next to the park, from where the private elephant safaris begin, I climbed up wooden stairs to a loading platform and awkwardly climbed onto the back of a female elephant. A nepalese tourist cuople from Kathmandu joined me in the wooden boxy saddle strapped to her back and we were off.

The driver sits on the elephant's neck and uses vocal commands- aparently trained elephants can understand and respond to over 50 commands- as well as his feet behind the massive ears to steer the giant. The ride on an elephants back is extremely bumy and my legs hung over the side so I could feel the animal's rough leathery skin on her left shoulder and side on my bare feet.

We barreled through the forest, keeping mostly to vague overgrown paths, as we on top were busy dodging branches, thorned vines, and spider webs and their large colorful residents. Along with 3 or 4 other elephants in the area, we circled deer and wild boars, but never sited a rhino or the incredibly elusive tiger. Aftr an hour in the forest, we crossed a pond, the water up to the animal's belly and took a long road all the way back to our resort hotel.

The whole experience was short, dirty, uncomfortable, but amazingly real. I was a dream to mount a giant beast and venture into a preserved jungle inhabited by rare, endangered animals living in the wild, even if I didn't get to set eyes on the rarest. Its a feeling that I can't put into words.

That afternoon I got the opportunity to go down to the river and bathe with a couple of elephants while crocs watched us from downriver. Their master would call out commands and the animals would kneel down in the water allowing climb on its back. Thn another shout would result in a rumbling blow me as the great beast stood again. Consecutive commands led the elephant to dip its trunk into the current below us, fill it with water, and spray it up over its head at me riding on its neck. This repeated a few times and the nthe elephant would lie on its side in the water, and I would scramble up onto its massive chest. Another command from its master standing nearby and I am thrown into the brown water as the elephant abrubtly righted itself again.

Even after only a half hour, I felt so privileged to be able to get so close and personal with a grand creature that is confined to zoos in America.

That evening I elected to ride a bike with a young man that works for the hotel into the forest to a large lake named Twenty Thousand Lake. The ride was 16 km one way, exactly 10 miles. Our one gear bikes didnt reach very high speeds, especially on the horrible roads inside the forest, and I tired quickly.

After only a short time a the lake my guide- whose name means "love" in Nepali- and I peddled back but stopped a couple times to watch large birds, a wild boar, and monkeys playing near the road. We stopped about 30 mins from the hotel because I was incredibly thirsty after biking 15 miles on rocky roads and needed some water from a store. After a half hour rest, we continued in the dark, dodging invisible groups of people in the road and trying to keep the huge mosquitos from flying into our eyes and mouths. For half the time the power went out- very common here- and not even the rare street light was available to light the pot hles and puddles that dotted the road.

I was exhausted after my busy last day in Chitwan and sleep found me quickly. The next day I boarded a bus to the border and I was gone. My time at Chitwan was as variable as ever, the pure adventure was unreal while me role as a tourist was sometimes very frustrating. But after the unique 5 days, I feel very alive and have loads of unforgetable moments to reminisce about for years.



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