Chitwan. Or, more accurately, ESCAPE FROM CHITWAN!
Chitwan is a town between Pokhara and Katmandu which is near a
large nature preserve. The drive from Pokhara to Chitwan is quite
pleasant. The first half is through steep, green hills broken
by the occasional river valley. The vegetation is nicely jungle-like,
with broad-leaved trees and tall grass, all of it vibrantly alive
after the recent monsoon rains. We also pass terraced rice fields
starting to turn gold as the harvest nears. A number of buildings
here are in a style thousands of years old: timber frame and thatched
roof, with walls made of a layer of thatching covered with a smooth
layer of clay. Still, there's the occasional brick or concrete
building as well.
Our accommodations in Chitwan…well, suck. Badly. The Jungle Nepal
Resort, which came highly recommended to us, is in dreadful condition.
They're in the midst of constructing several new buildings, but
they're not done yet, so we have to stay in their crumbling old
buildings. The hot water heaters have been moved to the new buildings,
so there's no hot water. They're also rebuilding the kitchen,
so we have to go to the hotel next door to eat. They're redoing
the landscaping, so the outside looks like a gravel pit with occasional
trees. Oh, and it's the holidays, so while there's a staff, there's
nobody to complain to. At least, nobody who can do anything.
While our accommodations are dreadful, the first foray into the
wilderness is pleasant. We get into a flat-bottomed canoe and
drift down the river looking for animals. Nepal doesn't have anything
like the wealth of wildlife that Africa has, so most of what we
see are birds and the occasional crocodile. The trip ends at an
elephant breeding center. Among them were a family of elephants,
including a cute little baby elephant being protected by the older
ones.
We stroll around and try not to get too close to the large animals,
but they occasionally try to get close to us. Indeed, a four month
old elephant gets very close to Naomi, nudging her chair out of
the way in order to get to a pile of hay. There was some talk
of taking the baby elephant with us as secondary transportation.
One thing I can say for the lack of big wildlife is that it makes
you pay closer attention to the little things. For example, Nepal
is home to some remarkable insects, like this lovely dragonfly
I noticed while sitting on a riverbank.
The afternoon trip, a drive out to 20,000 Lake, goes rather differently.
Indeed, it becomes
The plan for the afternoon was to drive out to a small lake adjacent
to the park area. During this entire trip, we never actually entered
the park proper. Rather, we went through one of a number of forest
areas owned by a consortium of hotels and resorts, all surrounding
the park. Anyway, the omens for this expedition were poor. The
jeep to take us into the forest was an hour late, had trouble
starting, and was clearly struggling with a significant fuel leak.
Nevertheless, we carry on.
On the trip, the jeep stalled out a time or two, since it appeared
that we had lost first gear. When we got into the woods, we started
going down a dirt road with some very deep ruts. This caused some
problems for Naomi, since the benches in the jeep were very narrow.
She got banged around a bit as we kept hold of her.
Then the jeep got stuck in the mud. On one particularly deep set
of ruts, we lost momentum and stopped. And so, deep in the forest,
we had to get out and push the jeep out of the mud. With no place
to turn around, there was little for it but to keep going on to
the lake.
When we got to the lake, the engine died completely. So there
we were, several kilometers away from anything even vaguely resembling
the vestiges of civilization, in the middle of a forest known
to be inhabited by tigers, with a dead engine and the sun going
down. There were a few thoroughly drunk Nepalis in the vicinity,
hanging out on their day off, but there was little help there.
With a few twigs and a Coke bottle label, the jeep was eventually
restarted, and we were finally off. The driver was advised to
ignore the bumps and power through any muddy ruts, lest we get
stuck again. As the sun finally set, we were out of the forest
and on our way back to the hotel. Need I mention that we didn't
see much in the way of animals?
When we got back, they attempted to serve dinner in one of the
new buildings, but as we started the soup, the tablecloth became
polka-dotted with little insects, which no amount of bug-smashing
could abate. We retreated to Naomi's room to plot our next move.
The next day, we were ready for what we had come here for: riding
elephants. There's lots of elephant-riding at Chitwan. The typical
"saddle" is a wooden frame, shaped like half of a cube. The frame
is two or three feet on a side, and about half that height, with
cloth webbing across the bottom. The frame is securely strapped
to the elephant's back, with the mahout actually seated outside
the frame on the elephant's neck so that he can rest his feet
behind the elephant's ears (that's Naomi, Ken, and Helen).
These frames seat four, whether they fit or not. I can see them
adequate for, say, a family of four Nepalis, who tend to be small
and lean (or even five if the fifth is a very small child), but
it's more than a little cramped for that number of larger Europeans.
We had two elephants, one of which held Ken (who would never be
mistaken for a small person), Helen, Naomi, and Callee. Antone
and I shared the second with a pair of German tourists. We took
a long walk through town to the buffer zone forest and wandered
through the trees for about two hours. The elephants we rode in
Africa were a smoother, more comfortable ride, but what struck
me as the most important difference was in the attitude. The African
guides made it sure that we knew that they were involved in some
sort of environmentally responsible enterprise and told us a lot
about the elephants and the environment. Here, riding elephants
is something that tourists do. We got into the elephant and walked
around the wilderness with no commentary on the whys and wherefores.
We didn't see much, but we did eventually see a pair of rhinos:
a mother and child. Our mahout's strategy to get us good pictures,
though, seemed to be to charge right up to the rhinos, which struck
me as a bad idea. The mother rhino made a good show of moving
into a protective position, but we did eventually manever into
a position to get a good picture.
Once we got back to the Jungle Nepal Lodge, we embarked on
Having finally become fed up with our accommodations, we left.
We moved to the small hotel next door, to where we were doing
most of our meals anyway. We got several visits from the staff
of our former lodging who were trying to alter the paperwork to
make it look like not so much of a disaster. We declined to assist
them, and when we got back to Katmandu, Ken performed the nigh-impossible
feat of getting a partial refund out of the management. In dollars,
even!