David Pafford of Spur and his son Caleb continue their travels through Asia, including a visit to the Asian nation of Nepal. “If you would like to see more photos and hear the ‘long version’ of our story,” wrote Pafford, “please visit the website www.fartherbeyond. com/circumnavigation. I hope you will join us each week to hear the latest report.”
When you think of Nepal, the first thing that comes to mind is Mount Everest.
Nepal is known for being the birthplace of the Buddha. Trekkers indeed head for Nepal to hike the more accessible portions of the Himalayas. There are Buddhist temples and monasteries, and most summit attempts on Everest do begin from Nepal. Surprisingly, though, Nepal also has a huge jungle national park.
In Chitwan, home of the country’s first national park, we got up early Friday morning to do a walking tour of the jungle. Caleb was a bit nervous about this, as people sometimes see tigers and other dangerous animals on these “safaris.” Since it was monsoon season, the park itself was closed to the jeep safaris. We would take a jeep trip that afternoon to a peripheral area where vehicular traffic was still allowed, but if you wanted to enter the park proper while we were there, you had to walk it.
Caleb’s fear was probably piqued by the fact that our guides gave us a safety briefing explaining what to do if we were confronted by a tiger, bear, or charging rhino while on foot. The instructions were all different. I wondered to myself if under the stress of being attacked by a wild jungle animal, they actually expected any newcomer to remember which actions went for which type of attack by which animal. I took solace in the fact that if the guides thought it likely we’d be attacked, they probably wouldn’t be walking through the jungle with a couple of yokels from Texas.
To my disappointment, we never did see any tigers or leopards, but we saw lots of peacocks, summer deer and spotted deer, an eagle, quite a few rhinoceroses, including some mother baby pairs, and several rhesus macaque monkeys. There were two different kinds of crocodiles. We got pretty close to the fish-eaters, but gave the meat-eaters a lot more distance. We saw a rare colorful oriole, several almost fluorescent caterpillars, multitudes of beautiful black and yellow butterflies, and some long, skinny, red-and-black things that looked a little like stink bugs which Caleb was really impressed with. We never saw any sloth bears, but they apparently have those. We saw a bunch of their dung. They climb up at night and sleep on the wildlife viewing towers.
We had a group jeep safari in the afternoon. Our walking tour had been private. We got to meet several other tourists, which was fun. I got some good tips on visiting Malaysia from a woman who lived in Dubai. Caleb kept a German couple entertained when there were not so many animals. We didn’t see any animals we hadn’t seen in the morning, but it was enjoyable and the scenery was brilliant both times.
I got my favorite photo from Chitwan during this jeep safari. We came upon some kids playing a pickup soccer game as we approached town. They were playing “half court” because a rhinoceros was standing there guarding the opposite goal.
When we were selecting the activities our hosts coordinated for us at Chitwan, I had asked for input from Caleb. He had heard me elect to take the group jeep safari over the private one. This alone reduced our cost by $125! He wanted to see some elephants, but when I asked him which elephant activity he was most interested in, he surprised me by choosing the breeding facility. There was also an “elephant safari,” where you actually got to ride the elephant. He had selected the less expensive option out of concern for my budget.
We had completed the items on our agenda and had a sort of “flex” day on our final day in Chitwan. I was fine with taking some of the day to rest, write, and catch up on some work. We had not seen any big cats, though, and we were here in the jungle for just this last day. I asked Caleb if he really would rather have seen the breeding facility than ride the elephants. Once he said he had just fibbed on that to try to keep my costs down, I proposed doing the elephant safari on our last morning. I didn’t expect to see any animals we hadn’t seen already. It was low season at Chitwan for a reason. But we could kill two birds with one stone here. We took one last opportunity to see some wildlife and got to ride an elephant!
We didn’t see any new animals, but we rode the elephant. It was interesting to see how the driver interacted with her. He nudged her forward by tapping the backs of her ears with his bare feet. He talked to her gently in Nepali, and sometimes offered more crisp commands of some kind. He did have a big stick, but I only saw him tap on the top of her ear with it, rather than using it to strike the animal. We rode around looking at the same animals for a couple of hours. We passed through bogs, forded a river twice, and swished branches away several times. Once, my water bottle fell to the ground. The elephant picked it back up with her trunk and handed it to the driver, who returned it to me! Once, the driver had to get off to take a break. He remounted by climbing up and over the head of the elephant rather than scaling a ladder and dropping into the basket as we had done. We enjoyed the rest of the day lounging at our room. We rode the decrepit motel bike here and there. Our host taught Caleb how to play Ludo. I wrote and caught up on work. I handwashed all my clothes and hung them on a line on the building roof. It as a nice relaxing afternoon. I even ran that day and the next morning. The runs did not feel refreshing, though. It was still very hot in Chitwan. Even at daybreak, it was muggy and in the 80s (Fahrenheit). I had quit running due to the heat while we were in the Emirates, Oman and India, but Sauraha wasn’t much better. The important thing was that we had seen the rhinos and ridden the elephant.
