Chitwan

So after a long, hot and very bumpy bus ride to Chitwan, taking 7hours on a dirt track consisting of rocks and stones: wide enough for one veichle only, we arrived to be greeted by yet more pesky taxi drivers trying to persuade us to go to their hotel. I straight away spotted the Gaida Lodge sign and headed towards the guy, saying how much are your rooms. After he replied 300...I said "Dom we are staying here". I was happy at how quick and how stress free this was...unlike Pokhara!! So we loaded our bags into the jeep and set off to the lodge. After settling in, we were told we were getting a free 'nature walk' around Chitwan by the guy who met us at the bus park...we thought ahh cool!!...So 4:30pm came and we were met by Mr Wildlife himself...he was sporting some binoculas and a "Birds of Nepal" book...it was...yes....a bird watching walk!! hahaha!! We thought this was rather funny and we were very much up for it, well I did, I thought the times when Rach and I used to birdwatch outside my bedroom window would finally pay off. He seemed a cool guy and showed us the Elephant stables and Thaura huts, which were built out of mud and sticks. A small dog was following us and when we asked if it was his, he casually replied "No...but the dogs know me round here!!"...Hmm...Cool!! We reached the fields and were seperated from the jungle by a small river, the bird watching began. He was showing us the sand martins, purple herons, red whiskered bulbuls, cuckoos, woodpeckers (Dom spotted that one) and the crested serpant eagles...he gave us each the chance to get a closer look through his bino-clas...(he pronounced it that way)...although only one eye worked, but we were able to borrow his telescope if we wanted to take bird watching to the next level!!! We thought some new bird had been discovered when Mr Wildlife fell over trying to get a glimpse of this "amazing" bird...we were also excited at the thought of what bird we might have seen...we enquired..."What was that?"...he replied, in a heap on the floor, "Ahh that was a pigeon"...we were a little dissapointed to say the least. This bird watching mularkey turned into a pretty awesome adventure after we had seen a wild elephant crossing the river. Next thing we know, Mr Wildlife and I spotted two wild rhinos across the river about 15yards from us. Mr Wildlife was soooooo amazed, he wanted pictures...for his website (which didnt exist yet). He wasnt interested in taking pictures for us...it was all about him and his webpage!! One moment later, he was running towards the rhinos...flip flops off...shorts hiked up...bird book on the floor...crossing the river, for a "closer" look. He was up the cliff on the opposite side to us, he must have been about 10cm away from the rhinos head, he had his phone out snapping away. It was hilarious, he definatley wasn't concerned with saftey, eventhough he hid everytime the rhino looked up.

A few minutes later we bumped into fellow bird watchers, who had also spotted the rhinos...Jon and Eliza!! An Indian couple, who were teachers, he was a headmaster who had retired and she was a teacher...just a normal teacher, as Jon kept reminding us! He was very enthusiastic and wanted a picture with us after 2minutes of introudicing himself. His video camera was rolling the whole time...he got his guide to film us getting introduced to Jon and Eliza. This video, we later found out, was heading to the Discovery Channel...Jon must have thought the amateur video would have been good enough.

Our bird watching walk ended with us watching the sunset over the river. It was amazing and so peaceful. We could get used to this all too easily.





Day two, we headed to the river to bathe with the elephants. We got escorted down by another wildlife fanatic from our lodge, who imitated bird noises for us, and attempted to point them out, although half the time they had flown off but he hadnt noticed. He was a cool guy, Dom had a connection with him after he shard his love for football...bless!! Once at the river was got straight on the elephant...Pooja....she was sooo big, she was amazing. The guy from the lodge offered to take some pictures for us...good job he came to show us the way!! After being drenched in water and tipped off it was time up. I managed to squeeze in another go before we left though.

Day three was a packed day for us. We had a elephant safari in the morning and a jeep safari in the afternoon, all through the jungle and across the river. Our elephant safari was a 7:30am start, we set off for our 2 hour trek. We were deep in the jungle getting battered by branches and leaves, covered in spiders and bugs...and huge massive red stick insect type things...our elephant made her own pathway half the time. She generally ate her way through the leaves and trees for us to get through!! After being dragged through one rather large tree Dom's flip flop fell off, as we couldnt really stop and get off...well I wouldnt of incase a tiger ate us, we told our driver, who didnt speak English. He grunted a little and next thing our elephant had picked up the flip flop with her trunk and lifted it up to us. Pretty cool. We saw loads of wildlife...monkeys and elephants, deer and pigs and loads of different birds. We didnt manage to spot a sloth bear or a tiger though. Before we knew it we were on our way back and our ride was over :-(

After a quick lunch, we were back heading to the river, ready for our jeep safari which would last 4hours!!!! It was so hot and we had no water. Our hotel friend told us to make sure we didnt sit at the back, as this was the place you got covered in dust...we literally power walked our way to the front of the jeep...it was like a race, and just at the end as we were about to get on, we got overtaken by everyone else (I dont know how this happened) who got the good seats and I got the back!!!...I thought surely I cant get that covered in dust, we were going through the jungle...its grass!!...wrong...1hour into it, I was caked in dust. My whole back was covered and I now looked a slightly darker shade of brown. We took so many pictures and saw five rhinos, more monkeys and more deer and more different types of birds. We were all detirmed to see a tiger, but it didnt happen, which was a shame. Our jeep safari ended and it was great to have been able to go through the jungle both on an elephant and on the back of a jeep.