Chitwan, Nepal
Trip Start
Dec 08, 2007
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127
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Trip End
Aug 14, 2008
Royal Chitwan National Park,
Nepal
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Tourists go to Chitwan to go on safari, the national park is home to many species of animals and birds including rhinos, loepards, crocodiles and even tigers. As it is low season though hardly anyone is there and you can get rooms in really swanky hotels for a fraction of the cost
1 - Sunset over the National Park
. We arrived to a complete onslaught of hotel owners all wanting us to go with them. There were over a dozen of them all right in our faces, shouting over each other and they just wouldn't stop. We couldn't hear what any of them were saying, or eachother, so after watching the spectacle for a few minutes we just jumped in the nearest jeep and made our escape! The hotel we went to was really nice, like a safari style lodge with a swimming pool. It was $30 a night though, so we just stayed one night then moved to another hotel which was actually nicer, half the price and we had the place to ourselves.
On one day we hired bikes again to go to the local elephant breeding centre. It was a lovely sunny morning and on the way we finally got our first look at the Himalaya and it was worth the wait, it is an awesome sight. We're still trying to work out exactly which mountains we could see. We cycled through some villages and finally found the elephant breeding centre where we saw lots of elephants, our favourites of course were the babies who had free rein of the place and were just so cute.
As it is monsoon season the tracks in the national park are unpassable for the jeeps so you can only go on safari on an elephant
2 - Elephant breeding centre
. We were fine with that, although wished our elephant had a roof when it absolutley bucketed it down for about an hour and soaked us to the skin. All the animals obviously had more sense than us and went home, we wouldn't have seen them through the driving rain anyway, apart from some beautiful deer feeding in the jungle. Then the rain stopped, the sun came out and as we approached a clearing we saw in the bushes three one horned rhinos!! They weren't bothered by us being there at all and our elephant walked right up to them so we got a really good look at them. It was a wonderful experience. That evening we went down to the riverside to watch the sunset and do some croc watching. We saw a Marsh Mugger crocodile sitting in the reeds looking mischeivous, apparently they have developed an appetite for the local dogs, about 15 have gone missing recently!
