Hello!
I made it to Chitwan National Park yesterday. It's a 6 hour bus ride from Kathmandu. I was originally going to fly, but a budget revision led to a bus ride. The tourist only" bus was not exactly tourists only, and was a far cry from even a Greygound bus. But it wasn't as bad as a bus I once took in Costa Rica, and if anyone remembers the movie "Romancing the Stone", it wasn't as bad as the bus Kathleen Turner ended up on in search of Cartajenga. At least there were no livestock on the bus! In the end, I'm glad I took the bus, as it gave me the opportunity to see a lot of the country.
The drive went through the mountains and I was able to see people living literally on the hillside (in shacks, but in LA that kind of real estate would be worth a fortune!) There were also people living on the hillside, but across a river, and so they built suspension bridges that they use to cross the river and get to the road. Imagine that as your daily commute instead of the freeway (that thing you east coasters call a parkway or a turnpike).
The us stopped several times at roadside shacks for refreshments and potty breaks. I give myself many gold stars for using what they,very, loosely called a toilet. My Mom use to tell stories about strengthening her thigh muscles in preparation for her trips to Asia so that she could squat over the whole in the ground. Well, we now have that in common. However, thanks to the capitalism in America, and the marketing of Target, I had tiny rolls of toilet paper with me. A luxury that I doubt any of the other women had with them. If I had had more with me I could have sold them for a profit, I'm sure!
I made it to Chitwan around lunchtime and enjoyed a walk to the edge of the park with a guide (and two women from Chile) were we saw the gov center for Elephants. It was so hard to see them chained to a post (to keep them from wandering off) after having seen so many wild elephants in Africa. Asian elephants are smaller,esp their ears, but have been bred for domestication for decades. We then took a walk through the park along the river where we saw an eagle, an oriole, some parakeets, and a crocodile. They have two types of crocs here (again, I'm not catching the names as well as I did in Africa, so I'm going to use my own), a "regular" looking one, and one with a long pointy snout full of sharp teeth (the name starts with a G, that's as much as I got). We saw the regular one. We ended the walk by the river to watch the sunset. After dinner we were taken to a Tharu (the local people here) cultural show. They did some fantastic dances with sticks and I was quite impressed that no one got their head smacked by the fast moving sticks! They even had a Peacock dance/costume that could have rivaled the horse costume in The War Horse stage play.
This morning was supposed to be my elephant ride, but in my excitement to have electricity last night, and my rush to get out on time this morning, I left my camera battery charging :( so I'll have to do it tomorrow morning. I was going to use the time to visit the shops in town, but the atms were all closes (and I'm out of rupees) so lucky you, I used the time to post. There won't be pictures for a while,as they have wifi here, but no actual computer for me to use to upload my pictures. Also, this post is taking forever to write. I bought an external bluetooth keyboard for my kindle, but it's so mall that I cant't fit my hands on and type normally, so I have to do the hunt and peck method which, for someone who can atcualy type, is very slow and frustrating!
This afternoon, with my camera AND battery intact, I will be taking a jeep safari. Yipee!
That's all for now,
Robyn
I made it to Chitwan National Park yesterday. It's a 6 hour bus ride from Kathmandu. I was originally going to fly, but a budget revision led to a bus ride. The tourist only" bus was not exactly tourists only, and was a far cry from even a Greygound bus. But it wasn't as bad as a bus I once took in Costa Rica, and if anyone remembers the movie "Romancing the Stone", it wasn't as bad as the bus Kathleen Turner ended up on in search of Cartajenga. At least there were no livestock on the bus! In the end, I'm glad I took the bus, as it gave me the opportunity to see a lot of the country.
The drive went through the mountains and I was able to see people living literally on the hillside (in shacks, but in LA that kind of real estate would be worth a fortune!) There were also people living on the hillside, but across a river, and so they built suspension bridges that they use to cross the river and get to the road. Imagine that as your daily commute instead of the freeway (that thing you east coasters call a parkway or a turnpike).
The us stopped several times at roadside shacks for refreshments and potty breaks. I give myself many gold stars for using what they,very, loosely called a toilet. My Mom use to tell stories about strengthening her thigh muscles in preparation for her trips to Asia so that she could squat over the whole in the ground. Well, we now have that in common. However, thanks to the capitalism in America, and the marketing of Target, I had tiny rolls of toilet paper with me. A luxury that I doubt any of the other women had with them. If I had had more with me I could have sold them for a profit, I'm sure!
I made it to Chitwan around lunchtime and enjoyed a walk to the edge of the park with a guide (and two women from Chile) were we saw the gov center for Elephants. It was so hard to see them chained to a post (to keep them from wandering off) after having seen so many wild elephants in Africa. Asian elephants are smaller,esp their ears, but have been bred for domestication for decades. We then took a walk through the park along the river where we saw an eagle, an oriole, some parakeets, and a crocodile. They have two types of crocs here (again, I'm not catching the names as well as I did in Africa, so I'm going to use my own), a "regular" looking one, and one with a long pointy snout full of sharp teeth (the name starts with a G, that's as much as I got). We saw the regular one. We ended the walk by the river to watch the sunset. After dinner we were taken to a Tharu (the local people here) cultural show. They did some fantastic dances with sticks and I was quite impressed that no one got their head smacked by the fast moving sticks! They even had a Peacock dance/costume that could have rivaled the horse costume in The War Horse stage play.
This morning was supposed to be my elephant ride, but in my excitement to have electricity last night, and my rush to get out on time this morning, I left my camera battery charging :( so I'll have to do it tomorrow morning. I was going to use the time to visit the shops in town, but the atms were all closes (and I'm out of rupees) so lucky you, I used the time to post. There won't be pictures for a while,as they have wifi here, but no actual computer for me to use to upload my pictures. Also, this post is taking forever to write. I bought an external bluetooth keyboard for my kindle, but it's so mall that I cant't fit my hands on and type normally, so I have to do the hunt and peck method which, for someone who can atcualy type, is very slow and frustrating!
This afternoon, with my camera AND battery intact, I will be taking a jeep safari. Yipee!
That's all for now,
Robyn
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