Day 55 - Chitwan National Park, Nepal

Day 55 – Hers.

After such a huge dinner, I just had coffee for breakfast and we piled into an open back truck to get to the start of our elephant safari.  We were combined with another Gecko group – 8 Australians and a Canadian – all girls, all around late 20s – on the Kathmandu to Delhi cultural tour.  Tien is joining this group from Chitwan.  Losing her will leave a big hole in our little group, our ‘family’ – she doesn’t seem overly thrilled with the prospect either.

Anyway, we held on, squished together in the back of the truck to the start of the elephant safari, climbed up onto the loading bay, seated ourselves 4 to a howdah and set off, lumbering into the jungle.  Yesterday they had seen 4 rhinos – but no such luck for us. (Tiger sightings are incredibly rare – maybe once a decade.  Let’s face it: if you had an entire national park to roam, would you choose the small bit overrun by tourists on elephants twice each day?)  I enjoyed the ride, though – and whilst the Australians were interested in the sightings of peacocks and deer – red deer, barking deer and one spotted bambi – I was more interested in the wild chicken.  Wild chicken?  Really? Apparently so – and it is very colourful, indeed – red and blue and green on its wings. Very odd. We also saw another of those black-faced lemurs and a few birds.... can you tell I’m not much into ornithology?

After a couple of hours of crossing rivers and trampling grassland and jungle, we returned to the loading bays and our open-back truck returned us to town.  We watched the elephants having their daily bath in the river and then wandered a bit, being questioned by yet another group of school children practising their already fluent English by surveying the tourists.  We had a delicious lunch in a cool, upstairs cafe  - koftey momos for me, dumplings steamed and then sautéed on one side, filled with spicy vegetables and dipped in a chilli sauce. The others went off for a dugout canoe ride in the afternoon heat and a visit to the elephant breeding centre – I read, wandered and sat by the riverbank for sunset, hoping I might see a crocodile – no such luck, I’m afraid – but I did get chased back into camp by a herd of water buffalo intent on finding the sweetest bit of elephant grass.....

Our last evening together as a group was spent at a ‘dinner dance’ at the camp.  Nearly fifty Thauru boys put on a show that is a bit like English Morris dancing gone native and then got us to join in.  I really enjoyed myself – Tien again refused to dance, but used my camera to get a few photos of me.... The meal was a buffet – similar to our river camp feast – and we reviewed the highlights of our trip – all agreeing that it was really our last night – without Tien, it just couldn’t be the same.