First foray into Nepal

Happy 2073! Nepal - in addition to having a timezone of GMT+05:45 (aka, 15 minutes ahead of India) - has its own calendar as well and we happened to spend new years eve last night at the delightful Royal Beach Camp.

Going back a few days, we crossed the border on the 9th with typical subcontinent levels of bureaucracy. To exit India, we all sat outside a glorified shack that had goats, chickens, children and a snake running\slithering around it and were called in one by one to answer an agent's questions (answers of which were in our passports in his hand) for him to handwrite our details in a hand-lined notebook no one will ever look at. About 45 minutes later we piled back on to the truck to drive across a bridge (a much shorter period of statelessness than when we exited Bolivia about 15 hours before officially entering Peru in 2013) to reach the impressively large and newly built Nepalese border building. The visa options are 15 days, 30 days or 90 days. The fact that I'm spending about 38 days in the country meant my visa cost $100USD whereas Patrick's was only $25. Visas in hand, Dutchie put pedal to the metal and took us a few hundred kilometres further west into Nepal. Our hotel for the night was in a nondescript town I never did catch the name of (Lahan, as it happens! - Patrick), like so many hundreds we've driven through in India.

With another early morning start, we made it halfway across the entire country before noon, arriving at the Rhino Lodge in Sauraha on the edge of Chitwan National Park. Our first afternoon there, we jumped into rickety wooden carts pulled by oxen for the journey to a neighbouring village and the Tharu Cultural Museum. Chitwan became Nepal's first national park in 1973 and while that's been great for wildlife preservation, it did mean turfing out ("relocating") all the people who had been living there for generations. A few individuals' stories were profiled, discussing the positives and negatives of the change. We walked around the tiny village a bit, and saw new houses being built, but mostly just cooed over baby goats, calves, chicks and ducklings (along with a profusion of Marijuana plants growing wild by the roadside! - Patrick). We bumped along back to the hotel, past rice paddies and old men playing cards and kids kicking bottles around, watching the transition from traditional village to town catering to Western tourists, with the usual proliferation of shops selling bright cotton hippy pants and "traditional handicrafts."
When our oxen dropped us outside the hotel, an elephant and its minder veered off the main road towards us and marched straight through the hotel grounds to the river directly behind the restaurant building for bath time.  

Selephie game is strong

 Wild elephants aren't very appreciated here due to their habit of rampaging through crops, but the working elephants are used by rangers. The grass in the park is so high, travelling by elephant is the most effective way of catching and preventing poachers.  Naturally we scurried behind the elephant (Remi and Jonny caught a ride on her back, when the enterprising mahout saw an opportunity for making a few rupees from excited tourists). Whilst the elephant splashed around in the water, we found a perfectly located river beach bar. My first Everest beer (huge improvement on Kingfisher) coincided with watching my first sunset in Nepal and it was pretty damn gorgeous.

Waiting for my cheque from the beer company for this ad
Later in the evening, we went to another cultural centre for a dance demonstration. Most of the audience were Nepali and showed no hesitation in shouting raucous approval of the various performances, which at least was a break in the loud talking and selfie-taking. The first dance was all women, looking extremely bored and miserable. Luckily that was their only number, as the men really outshone them. The stick dance was quite cool, like a carefully choreographed stage battle. But nothing can match The Peacock. The crowd went wild when the portly peacock toddled on stage. The man in the suit did have impressive control of the puppetry controlling the neck and the audience acted like 1970s Mick Jagger was ripping off his shirt when the full plumage went up. Dance is the artistic medium that least captures me at the best of times, and cultural demonstrations take even that teetering level of interest down a few notches.   But the peacock was pretty good.

We spent much of the next day exploring parts of Chitwan. Firstly on the Rapti River by canoe, which was a long hollowed out tree that could fit about 10 people.  Our guide pointed out every last bird on the banks of the river, but as many of them (heron, egret, cormorants, plovers) are common in Florida, it wasn't too exotic. The occasional flash of an iridescent blue kingfisher was lovely and seeing an enormous wild peacock in a tree was pretty funny, when I've been used to only seeing them in the grounds of castles and stately homes.  The only other beasties we caught sight of from the canoe were a few crocodiles- some marsh muggers and the comparatively rare gharials. The canoe trip was very relaxing and pleasant, but after 40 minutes we pulled up to a bank and started a jungle hike (preceded by a variety of warnings of what to do if threatened by a rhino or sloth bear). Within the first 20 minutes of the walk, we got the sign to tiptoe through the leaves and were able to stand a few feet from a dozing rhino. The 7 of us on the walk stood silently on the main path while the main guide gestured for us to come down one at a time for a closer look. As I was crouched down next to the second guide in awe at the proximity of the triceratops (the guides called it a rhino, but I know what I saw), he woke up for a little snack. The second guide mouthed I needed to stay completely still and quiet- just as his mobile started ringing. Happily the rhino seemed more interested in returning to his nap than goring us, so I crept back to the path. Even though this was our only rhino sighting, I was thrilled. Patrick has never seen a large animal in the wild, and when I was on safari in Tanzania, I nearly missed completing the Big Five checklist, till the last morning in Ngorongoro when I saw a speck in the distance that the safari guide assured was us a rhino (and the 42x zoom on my camera did just pick out a horn). But being this close was exhilarating
The rest of the bush walk our guide pointed out the signs of other animals- claw marks on trees from tigers and sloth bears, tiger poo full of deer hair, rhino poo (they like to go in the same spot), elephant poo (and how you can tell it's a wild elephant), actually mostly just seeing poo and a few damaged trees. We climbed up to one of the observation towers the soldiers use to watch for poachers and had a nice view over the grasses and forest.

Later in the afternoon, we jumped into jeeps for a trip to Bis  Hajaar Tal (20,000 Lakes). We saw the usual selection of birds - kingfisher, eagles, peacocks - and a few types of deer. The whole experience of sitting in the back of an openair jeep became much more enjoyable as soon as the sun dipped down and it was under 38 degrees.  

Tuesday morning we piled back into Daisy for the short in distance but long in time drive to Royal Beach Camp, near Pokhara. The tents were ready pitched for us down on the sand near the Trisuli River. After lunch - and a beer for courage - Patrick, Remi, Bex, Stephen and I got into helmets and PFDs, grabbed an oar and hopped into a raft- time for some whitewater with our guide Pineapple. The Trisuli comes down from the Himalaya (so it is BLOODY COLD), and through Kathmandu on its way to India where it becomes the Ganges. Holy as the Ganges may be, I'm glad I swam in it closer to source rather than further downstream when it's full of faeces and cadavers. There were powerful winds that afternoon so even going downstream we had to paddle with some force. The rapids were Grade 3 at the most, much tamer than my first time whitewater rafting in Alaska, and all swimming was intentional, ie no one fell overboard. Fabulous way to see the canyon and beat the heat.

We all passed a delightful evening playing uno, eating too much (I'm finding Nepali food much healthier than Indian), finishing up supplies of vodka and rum, and dancing around our campfire on the beach. With all the excitement of the day, I was in the tent by 10pm and only vaguely stirred when I heard a merry crowd of Nepalis counting down and cheering in the new year.

. 

As I finish typing, we're only 21km from Kathmandu and the end of our time with Daisy, though we don't have to make Dragoman goodbyes till tomorrow.