We're all going on a bear hunt in Chitwan!
Trip Start
Nov 04, 2007
1
59
62
Trip End
May 03, 2008
Where I stayed
Holy Lodge Guesthouse
Royal Chitwan National Park, Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal
Friday, April 25, 2008
We had planned to travel from Pokhara to Chitwan on a raft. Unfortunately we were the only two people in Pokhara who wanted to make this trip, so it was cancelled. Instead, we took a bus to the village of Sauraha, on the banks of the Rapti river, which forms the northern boundary of Royal Chitwan National Park. Sauraha is a sleepy little place, with several guesthouses, mainly down by the river. There are some resorts in the National Park itself, but we opted to stay in Sauraha, mainly because the resorts make you sign up for a whole programme (including an evening of traditional stick dancing i.e. Nepali Morris dancing), whereas staying in Sauraha we were able to pick what we wanted to do.
Ros:
The canoe trip and jungle walk
We weren't originally going to do a jungle walk
Baby elephant - click for story
. We'd read various accounts of people being attacked by tigers and chased by rhinos on such walks in Chitwan and we figured that we'd actually had enough exercise on this holiday already without an enforced sprinting and tree-climbing lesson. However, the guy who ran our guest house (whose name I've totally forgotten and I may come back and change this bit when I remember) really waxed lyrical about nature walks. He promised us two guides - one in front and one at the back - with big sticks and lots of knowledge about how to go about jungles without getting gored. So much to Hugh's dismay (he may be happy throwing himself off cliffs but when it comes to animals he is quite frankly a wimp. You should see how quickly he puts me between him and a barking dog...) we signed up.
It turned out that we were the only people going with our guides, which was nice. We picked up a dug-out canoe from the Rapti river beside our guesthouse (essentially a big tree, hollowed out and feels about as stable in the water as you'd imagine...not sure I drew breath for the first five minutes...) and went in search of crocodiles (now you see why stability of said canoe was such a concern...). We saw two within about three minutes. They were literally in the shallows just around the bend from the village
Hugh on safari in a canoe
. I managed to get a sort-of photo before they glided away into the depths - and crocodiles really do glide in a very scary gonna-sneak-up-and-eat-you type way. Thankfully these particular two were Gharial crocodiles, which were 'vegetarian' (cue heated discussion over whether vegetarians eat fish. My renewed curses again to those dear folks who eat fish and call themselves veggies...and I'm not referring to the crocodiles here, who presumably are blissfully unaware of such definitional problems and their ramifications for hapless real vegetarians). Ahem.
Our canoe trip didn't last very long as we pulled over at the side to go and find a rhino in a water hole. To aid your visualisation of the scene at this point, please picture Hugh looking distinctly waxy in complexion with eyes the size of saucers, picking his way a good way behind Ros and the first guide through thick scratchy grasses that were taller than us and very dense. Seriously, we could have trodden on a rhino's tail before we'd seen it. The rhino turned out to be a one-eared male and was bathing over the other side of the water hole with his bum to us. So, along with a few other canoe-fulls of people who'd gradually arrived, we happily snapped away with our camera taking distinctly mediocre pictures of the back end of a rhino mostly submerged a good way away
One-eared rhino
.Then it stood and quickly turned towards us.
Cue twenty panicking tourists scrambling through the grass to Get The Hell Out Of There. I paused for just a few seconds to get a photo of it standing - which was a bit rubbish as I was rushing - then joined the dash. I'd nearly got through the grass when I realised that not all the guides had followed at such a pace, and annoyed at not having got a good photo, I turned around to tiptoe back. Sure enough, Mr Rhino had just turned around to get comfy and was now facing us, mostly submerged and a good way away. And I'd missed the good picture. Doh!
We continued from there on foot through the grasses and hadn't gone far before our guide stooped to point out some tiger tracks that were fresh from the night before. If Hugh could have got any paler he'd have begun to turn transparent by this point. The guide then told us what we should do if we saw a tiger - not worry, stay still and take a photo. Er, ok... And if we saw a rhino - stay still, don't go close, perfectly ok unless it's a 'baby mother' in which case we might need to run. But not to worry because we should run in a zig-zag and climb up a tree, when we'll be quite safe
Tiger paw-print
. (Last time I ran for a train I nearly keeled over and I probably climbed my last tree a good seventeen years ago. Eeek!). If we saw a bear we should stay still and watch it - it might stand up and try to scare us but it was unlikely to attack. After all that I was starting to think that maybe Hugh had been right to think the walk a bad idea. Hugh asked whether our guide had been charged by a rhino before. 'Oh many time' said the guide laughing. Hugh didn't ask any more questions after that...
Walking through the jungle really is, as the guy at our guest house said, a really strange experience. You can feel the animals all around you - the occasional rustle, snap of a twig or sudden flurry of alarm calls from birds - but you rarely see any more than prints. We walked up to a little wooden bridge over a stream, paused for a few minutes and then walked back in the direction we'd come. In the few minutes we'd paused a civet cat had crossed the path just behind us and melted away into the bushes again.
Chitwan covers several different types of habitat - from the impenetrable spiky tall grasslands to a young forest with limited visibility through bushes and trees, right up to the ancient 'Sal' forest that we wouldn't see until our jeep ride allowed us to get further in
"Baby Mother" rhino print
. During the day the grasslands - which are quite wet and marshy - get horribly humid, especially as we're now almost into the sub-continent's hottest months, so the animals retreat into the forest. They often prefer to walk along the paths made by humans as they offer the best view of any approaching predators and the best relief from the humidity, so we saw plenty of fresh prints. At one point we were following bear prints, at another time a rhino and her calf (Hugh was none too happy about this one!). But apart from a troop of very loud monkeys (grey monkeys I believe), the back end of a leaping deer and the slashing tail of a large lizard as it leaped into the undergrowth, we didn't see any more animals. Still, it was amazing just to know you were so close to so many wild animals - who were probably watching us silently as we tried to quietly creep along (making, I'm sure, enough noise to warn every wild thing in the vicinity), jumping out of our skin at every weird noise and often freezing to stare into the surrounding trees with trepidation. And I took photos of the prints we saw - just to prove the animals really existed, even if we weren't to see them.Hugh:
Elephant Bath Time!
Everyday just before lunch, all the elephants come down to the river to have their daily bath
Hugh and Ros sitting on an elephant
. Our guesthouse was well placed right next to where they have their baths, and the best bit is you can get in the river with them and join in ......... so that's what we did!I was quite excited, but also a little worried. The manager of our guesthouse told us it's a fantastic experience but the thought of being so close to an animal weighing over ton makes you a little bit wary.
The mahoot gave us a bunk up so that we were sitting on the elephant's back, then he climbed up and the elephant walked right into the water. Then came the commands (as we were expecting!) for the elephant to start squirting us with water from its trunk. The water was actually a nice temperature and it was really refreshing on such a hot day. I had also taken the extra precaution of making sure I was sitting behind Ros, so even if it had been a bit cold it wouldn't have been too bad. After being thoroughly soaked, the elephant walked further into the river, stopped and then started rocking from side to side. Each time it rocked it was getting harder and harder for us to stay on, and you guessed it we ended up in the river!
We made our way to the river bank got back on the elephant and did the whole thing over and over again
Hugh and Ros getting a shower from an elephant
. By the end, once you knew what the elephant was going to do you could actually stay on its back by shifting your weight at the right time. However, it was going to keep rocking until we fell off so after a while I just fell off anyway!!It really was great fun and the elephants were so good - you could definitely tell that they knew they had to be careful with us because we are such small creatures. After that we watched the elephants play and bath in the water and it was clear how much they enjoyed it - it's definitely the highlight of their day!!
Jeep Safari
After our jeep safari in Similipal National Park in India, we weren't convinced it's such a good idea - the jeep just scares the animals away. Speaking to our guesthouse manager though, he said the jeeps go really deep into the park and that the animals aren't too phased by it so it's a good way to see a lot of wildlife.
So off we went into the jungle once more. I was quite relieved that this time we weren't on foot! It was a 4 hour safari in total and we saw an awful lot. Rather than try to describe the safari step by step it's probably easier for me to just list what we saw, so here goes:
Rhino
Mongoose
Monitor Lizard
Mugger crocodile
Spotted deer
Bison
Barking deer
Wild Boar
Monkeys
Paradise fly catcher (bird with a really long tail)
Peacock
Cuckoo
Kingfisher
Lots of other birds we didn't recognise
Halfway through our safari we stopped at the crocodile breeding centre
Hugh and Ros falling off an elephant
. The crocodile numbers in Chitwan plummeted at some point in the 1950s. Our guide tried to explain: it was something to do with them trying to get rid of malaria and this somehow affected the crocodiles (we can't remember the full explanation!). So a breeding centre was set up to try to re-populate the park. There are two types of crocodiles in Chitwan, the long-snouted Gharial and the Mugger (which looks like a normal crocodile). At the breeding centre there were a number of enclosures with pools, each filled with crocodiles of various ages. Each enclosure had a sign saying "2006 hatchlings", or whatever year they hatched, so you could see them throughout the stages of the development, right from funny tiny little things, to proper crocodile looking creatures. I actually thought it was really nice to see such efforts being made for the conservation of animals that don't seem as cute or as popular as some others.Also at the crocodile breeding centre was a poor tiger being kept in captivity (in a separate enclosure I should add). Her story is quite sad. Her mother had become a man-eating tiger. Apparently the Nepalis will only catch a man-eater after it has attacked humans twice. Unfortunately the mother did attack humans twice and she was hunted because she had the taste for human flesh (why bother catching a deer when you know how easy humans are to catch?). The mother managed to escape (although we're a bit cynical about that part of the story) but her 3 cubs were left to fend for themselves
Elephant being pampered
. The other two died but this cub was found chasing a goat in a village, in very bad condition. This is how she ended up in a cage, and although she looked well, she was obviously extremely bored and not very happy. The enclosure was not even very big, but it seems like there is a plan to move her to somewhere larger in the park. As I was looking at her, lying down bored and hot, I noticed a twig being poked through at her, antagonising her. I went round the corner to see an Indian tourist smiling and laughing as he poked her. I was so furious with him, as if the poor tiger has not been through enough already without some idiot doing this. So I told him off, and looking embarrassed (although a bit put out that I had spoilt his fun) he pulled the stick out.Ros:
The Elephant Safari
We'd been really looking forward to riding elephants into the jungle - not least because we hoped that, just like if you ride a horse into the British forest, the wildlife would probably not be afraid of us so we'd get a better view.
We set off at 6.15am - another early morning so we'd take advantage of the cool when more animals are awake - and met our elephant, Maatikily (no, I've no idea if that's how you spell her name!), and her Mahoot in the village
"Baby Mother" Rhino seen from top of an elephant
. From there we lurched and swayed (elephants have a weird gait!) down to the jungle. We weren't actually going to be inside the park for our safari. Chitwan is surrounded by a 'buffer zone' which contains areas of jungle and populations of wildlife almost identical to the park itself. Elephants employed by the government (yes, they really are on the staff role and get paid in food and shelter...) go into the park to an island area in the river, crossing half of the river on the way. But they cost more for less time on the elephant, so we opted for a private safari. Maatikily was a young elephant at 25 and her Mahoot had been with her for four years. Apparently his previous elephant didn't like people - a drawback for a tourist elephant. Thankfully he assured us that Maatikily liked people very much, which was something of a relief as we'd heard a Mahoot had been killed by his elephant just a few weeks earlier, whilst four tourists on it's back looked on unable to help. Naturally the locals explained the incident to us by describing the Mahoot as an Indian, a Muslim (we'd never have guessed!) and a drunk. The elephant now has a new Mahoot and continues to take tourists on safaris. You now see why we were so relieved Maatikily and her Mahoot had been together four years - she can't have been that elephant! Maatikily liked pulling bits off the trees as she went past them and bashing herself over the head with the branches
Poor tiger
. She refused to walk in other elephants' business on the path - even forcing us to go on a detour at one point - and she played by making (quite frankly, terrifying) churtles and roars. She was also a very fast elephant, and her Mahoot had great fun trying to make her go as fast as possible when we were on an open path. So, apart from Maatikily, what animals did we get to see on our safari? Well, not a whole load actually, but what we did see, we saw pretty close!
You'll remember earlier I said that our guide on the nature walk had said the rhinos most likely to charge were the 'baby mothers'? Well guess who we found bathing in a water hole? Yep, mummy, daddy and baby rhino. And what did the mahoot on the elephant in front of us do? Got his elephant to go INTO THE WATER to about five metres from the rhinos and then stood on his elephant's head and leaped about trying to get them to turn around and look at us! I know we were on an elephant, but rhinos can still charge elephants!!
Still, we got some lovely photos :)
Otherwise we saw a lot of birds of various types, some nasty small brightly coloured spiders that kept being pinged at us when we brushed through bushes and a leech that it took me a few attempts to GET OFF of my trousers. We hadn't anticipated the bugs-in-bushes situation as Maatikily crashed through the middle of the jungle in search of the yummiest bits of tree.
