Nepal - Chitwan National Park

After the trek we headed from Pokhara down to Chitwan National Park where we did a 2 day jungle safari walk. With 2 local guides we headed off in a canoe to the national park and before long were watching Gharial crocodiles bathing on the banks of the river. Then we set off into the jungle a bit unsure what to expect. Our guides had given us a prep talk about how there were lots of aggressive animals in the jungle and we needed to be alert at all times – slightly worrying when your guide is armed with nothing but a bamboo stick to fight off the wild elephants, tigers and rhinos!!

Gharial 

Luckily the closest they came to using their sticks was at lunch time when they suddenly leapt up with their sticks and ordered us to climb down into a nearby ditch – adrenaline pumping Mike and I were about to leap into the ditch head first when the two fighting rhinos stampeded past just metres from the patch where we had seconds earlier been enjoying our lunch! Apparently when rhinos are fighting their instinct to fight and kill everything is so strong that your only option if you do happen to find yourself in the path of a raging rhino is to hide and hope they haven’t seen you or climb a very thick tree. It was only about an hour later that we again found ourselves in this unfortunate predicament and this time had to do the latter. To be honest after the second scare I really didn’t want to see any more rhinos but it felt like every corner we turned there was another one. 

One Horned Rhino 

Unfortunately despite spending 3 hours at a lookout point we didn’t get to see a tiger or a bear, but we did manage to see loads of different birds, three types of deer, a family of wild boars, a monitor lizard plus the aforementioned crocodiles and rhinos so all in a very successful trip!

Next stop… India!!

Indian Pied Hornbill

Sambal Deer

One Horned Rhino

 

Wild Boar

Nepal - Travel Ho!

The long awaited ‘life changing, soul searching  trip of a life time’ begins. We finally arrived in Kathmandu  after an 8 hr stopover sitting on the pavement outside Mumbai airport in the 30 degree heat, sweating away in our jumpers in a feeble attempt to avoid the apparently malaria ridden mosquitos! Not the most relaxing way to spend the early hours of the morning, but apparently the only option when you have more than 3 hours to wait! In desperate need of a shower and some sleep we checked into our very cheap and cheerful hostel  - great to have an en suite toilet and shower, not so great to have a window that looked straight onto a wall offering nothing but the sound of howling cats on heat throughout the night. Luckily our neighbour was very skilled with a bucket of water.

Kathmandu Traffic

Kathmandu was crazily busy with beeping cars and motorbikes everywhere and the general hustle and bustle you would expect from a big dirty city really and although ok for a couple of days we were definitely very ready to move on when the time came for us to meet our trekking group!

Kathmandu Traffic