I'm in Nepal now, and it's awesome! Our first day mom and I got a night-bus from the eastern border at Kakarvita to the village of Sauraha, so we could visit Royal Chitwan National Park in the southern lowland plains. The bus ride was looooong and bumpy, with loud Hindi music blasting from old speakers. Since we were driving through rural Nepal, we saw a lot of farmland, mud and grass huts, and women dressed in brightly colored saris carrying huge silver pots on their heads. After a few hours we stopped for a bathroom break, where 20 strangers got off the bus, walked into a field, and peed together. Talk about stage fright, being the only one in the field with neon-white skin. I was surprised to see a man working nearby, pick-axing the ground in total darkness, while barefoot. That's a type of hardcore that not many of us know about. So, after many more abrupt stops and a sleepless night, we finally reached our stop and were let off the bus - just the two of us, alone, in the middle of a dark street at 3:30am. It was dead-quiet, with the exception of a few people walking the streets and coming towards us out of curiosity. I felt extremely vulnerable, so I dragged mom off to a hotel down a side street and sat right outside the door (our safest option) until it began to get light at 5am. I only started feeling safer after I saw children in uniforms walking to school at 4:30am.
Mom and I took a tiny horse-cart to the National Park a few miles away, and checked in to the coolest riverside hotel ever! The balcony had a view of Chitwan NP, and at night we could watch fireflies and listen to barking deer (yeah, they really do bark) across the river. One night there was an intense lightening storm with torrential rain, so I went outside to get wet and enjoy the pre-monsoon tropical storm. I sat in a small grass hut and watched the lightening until it stopped. There were no lightening bolts, but instead the whole sky (all the way to the horizon) would get bright at once, and then flicker like a lightbulb that's close to burning out. The sky would turn blue and light purple with the lightening, and sometimes get so bright that you could see all the colors of the landscape before going dark again. I've never seen anything like it before.
We went to an elephant breeding center and saw a 13-day old baby (so cute!) and a rare set of elephant twins - the first set of twins to ever both survive. While we were there, a wild elephant (that had been run out of his herd because he'd broken elephant social laws) came up to the fence, near the other elephants. Wild elephants are super dangerous, and this one had already killed a few people. We later went on an elephant safari, and rode through the jungle looking for animals. We saw sambar deer and spotted deer (deer are called "goats of the jungle" by the guides), and three different types of monkeys (including rhesus monkeys and hanuman langurs). But, because we were at mid-tree level on elephant back, the things I saw the most were spiders... millions of them. It's just a little difficult to look for tigers when your face is going through spiderwebs with every other step, and you have spiders and ants crawling all over you. However, I enjoyed crossing the rivers on the elephant, so that almost makes up for the spiders.One more highlight was bathing in the river outside our hotel with an elephant. I climbed up on its back and the elephant sprayed water all over itself and me, then shook its back and sent me flying into the water!
During a canoe trip, mom and I saw three crocodiles in the river, and the largest (about 10 feet long) was on the riverbank just a short distance from our boat. During a walk back up river, we heard snorting and grunting and saw nearby trees shaking. A quick burst of adrenaline went through me when I realized that I was within spitting distance (random fact: spitting world record is over 100 feet) of a potentially dangerous wild rhino, and completely unprotected. Later, during an evening jeep safari, we saw more rhinos, and they were closer than I've ever seen them at a zoo. We also saw fresh tiger and leopard tracks in the mud (so they *do* exist!), and termite hills taller than me.
Last night, mom and I are spent the night in the jungle itself, in a tall lookout tower with rooms. The noises of the jungle were spectacular to listen to, with frogs and crickets competing for attention, and barking deer communicating with each other. When the stars came out we could see them brilliantly shining, at the same time as watching falling stars, a distance lightening storm flickering in the clouds, and millions of fireflies everywhere. It was truly breathtaking.
Even though I've only been in Nepal for a few days, I'm already planning my next trip here. It's amazing!
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