Ahh Chitawan, you and your guilty non-Nepali pleasures. I can only justify going to the undeniably touristified (Yes, it IS a word. Well it is now. . .) Chitawan because my week-to-week experience at Parsha is authentically Nepalese. Disclaimer out of the way; now down to details.
Breakfast was banana pancakes. I am salivating over the memories. Then (because Guy has a sort of 'hey-you-smoke-and-I-smoke' sort of rapport with the manager) we went to do some elephant bathing for free. I'd refused to go on the elephant safari a few weekends ago because I'd ridden and elephant in Thailand and didn't like the way that the elephant was treated. Bathing, I figured, would be a little different. If I were to imagine an elephant's life things like eating, bathing, and interacting with other elephants/animals would seem like relatively enjoyable and natural things.
From all I could examine from the shore my suspicions were correct. The elephants didn't need coaxing into the water and I sometimes saw them do natural 'elephant things' like drinking the water and throwing dirt on themselves. Perhaps all this justification is overkill but it's necessary for me to feel at ease.
MOVING ON. . . the experience itself was incredible. The majesty and sheer size of an elephant is striking up close. With me (and some danish tourists) on it's back the elephant sprayed itself (and us) with water. Guy took some excellent photo's from the river shore.
Back at the rainforest hotel I sun-dried and read a bit while Guy talked with the manager and in the afternoon I had a nap.
At dinner we met some incredibly attractive danish travellers (and for the second time writing this diary entry I am salivating) who spoke English very well. I shamelessly showed off and broke the ice with a few card tricks (2 succeeded, 1 miserable failure) and afterwards we all went out together for 2-for1 cocktails.
My small frame means that 2 cocktails really hits me, and the joint that was passed around afterwards (offered as casually as one might offer an after dinner mint) probably didn't help my rapidly declining state either. The conversations were lively and great and I wish I'd taken photo's. We walked (ok, stumbled) back to the hotel only stopping for the obligatory late night inebriated snickers bar. It tasted like ground up unicorns.
Today was a big day. I went on a nature walk in the national park in the hopes that I would have a close (but not too close) encounter with some of the local animals. We did a round trip of about 8kms and I saw plenty of spotted deer and one rhino. The rhino was a male so we couldn't get too close, so we took photo's from afar.
Guy had been elephant riding and we both finished at around midday to sit and chat with the hotel manager. The hotel manager had quite and enthusiasm for marijuana and hash, which he called his 'herbal medicine's'. He explained that a hindi festival in celebration of Lord Shiva was approaching where the police turned a blind eye to the drug laws and everyone smokes marijuana and hash in praise of the Gods. Our manager had obviously started celebrating quite early and was keen to sell us some 'medicine'. Not this time though.
I took a 3hr nap in the afternoon and we again head into the town for cheap cocktails.
Although a little sore from the previous day's work I awoke motivated to finish the gravel shoveling task so that we could go to the Chitawan National Park on the weekend and relax.
In an effort to avoid muscle pain I adapted to shoveling left-handed and now consider myself and ambidextrous shoveler - My personal development has already begun! Like the previous day the children were keen to help and did so seemingly oblivious to the heat. It feels like an Australian summer here it Chitawan except that it is cold at night.
We finished the shoveling slightly early and the children and I celebrated by doing flips into the sandy pile of excess gravel. - I took photos.
We talked to Ramu (one of our hosts) about Chitawan and he said he knew a good place to stay; he even offered to take us there on his motorbike. The offer was too good to refuse so we piled all 3 of us onto the back of his motorbike and head off for the Chitawan National park.
The place that Ramu suggested was certainly very nice. It seemed quite apparent that the owner of the hotel and Ramu had come to some sort of agreement when we discovered that the previous volunteers had come to the same place. Nevertheless we couldn't have chosen better on our own. Ramu had mistakenly (or perhaps not so mistakenly. . ) organized us the deluxe suites consisting of a television (rare), a queen sized bed (rarer still), and a bathroom with a western toiled and 24hr hot water (practically unheard of in Nepal).
After a meal of vegetable mo-mo's (if you haven't tried these you should, they are amazing) we set out to explore the town. We found a roof-top bar with a five hour 'happy-hour' with 'buy one get one free' cocktails. When converted back to AUD's this is ludicrously cheap.
