Wasting no time after our trek, we signed up for a 2 night 3 day excursion to Chitwan National Park. Famous for tigers, elephants, and rhinos, visiting the jungle is one of the must-do activities during a trip to Nepal. We opted to go through an organized tour rather than going independently because we wanted to go during one of Nepal's many festivals. It would have been a bit like trying to fly to Florida on Christmas Eve by showing up at the airport without a ticket. Not worth the hassle!

My first impression of southern Nepal was a combination of awe - that I could STILL see the Annapurna mountain range clear across the country!!! - and annoyance - that I got 10 mosquito bites within the first hour of my arrival. I lost my battle with the mosquitos abysmally. When I boarded the bus back to Kathmandu I counted no less than 26 bites. Good thing I had taken my malaria medicine!

Our first day we walked to the river, which is a tributary of the Ganges, and watched the sunset while sipping banana milkshakes. It was warm and relaxing while it lasted. Our package tour was a bit rushed. As soon as the sun slipped down past the horizon our guide jumped up and told us it was time for dinner. We needed to be done with that before seeing the "Cultural Program."

I've always been more inspired and captivated by natural beauty and wildlife than by other cultures of people. This Cultural Program was no exception for me. We watched as a tribe of Indian/Nepalese people, whose origin is still a mystery in the history books, dance in circles to the beat of a drum. They're performance was different and very upbeat, but the look on their faces characterized my mood as well...bored. The highlight of the show was the dance of a man dressed as a giant peacock. If the manager of the program had any real showmanship he would have booked this act last. After that, the audience became antsy as we sat through 4 more dances. I'd sooner find fault with myself than those performers. I came to the jungle to see...well...jungle. So I was impatient to end the "Cultural Program" and rest up for my 6am wake up call.

The early morning dug out canoe ride along the river was awesome. Not the least exciting part was the lateral instability of the boat. Basically, at any moment I thought we'd tip over into crocodile infested waters. As it turns out, we only saw one crocodile at a distance, so we were probably safe. That is until we saw what our guide called a "man-eating" crocodile. Basically, the gangetic crocs have a long, thin mouth and are more specialized than the generalist crocs that occasionally have been known to attack humans. It turns out, people are not the preferred lunch of a croc. The real reason for these attacks is human encroachment on crocodile habitat. This much I know in my mind, but you couldn't pay me enough money to swim in that river!

We then spent a couple of hours walking through the jungle of the Chitwan National Forest. It was incredible. We didn't see any of the big game - tigers or rhinos - but I saw many brightly colored insects including a huge green butterfly that I didn't get a picture of...grrr! We also wandered into a group of rhesus monkeys that didn't seem to mind us watching them from a moderately close distance. I felt a rush of pride that I was able to identify the species for the group when we saw them. Special thanks to Dr. Altmann at Princeton's Evolutionary Biology program for that!

Finally, we enjoyed an elephant back safari through the jungle. Actually, "enjoy" is a strong word. I don't think I'd take another elephant back safari. When one of the drivers of the group of 25 elephants (Each carrying 4 tourists) spotted some rhinos, the entire mob stampeded towards the spot to surround them. It was an upsetting experience to watch a rhino mother and calf freak out as 25 elephants encircled them. They had no where to run. Neither fight nor flight were options for these two. So they anxiously withstood the barrage of photographs until finally the herd moved on. I swore that if I spotted any wildlife I would keep my mouth shut. Swaying through the forest on the back of an elephant along with 100 other loud tourists I'm not surprised that we didn't see anything else. On our return to the village I was given the opportunity to "drive." Translation: I sat on the elephant's neck. I think we got a picture. After nearly 3 hours, I was happy to finally alight to solid ground.

Our final day we visted the elephant breeding center where I had a hilariously close encounter. I walked around a sort of wall-less elephant stable with about 10 elephant moms and calves. One calf came to the fence expecting a treat. I put out my arm to pet its head, but it quickly wrapped it's little trunk around my arm for a smart, swift tug! We arm wrestled for about a minute which left my long sleeve shirt covered in mud and elephant goo. I also got some warm baby elephant breath in my face. What a cutie...and I only had a few scratces on me. The stout little trunk of that calf gave me further appreciation for how strong adults must be!

Posted by Nelle at 07:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Trekking in Nepal is one of those adventures that captured my imagination from an early age. It was always the fun, slightly askew destination for people of all ages. In books and TV shows, characters that found themselves disenchanted with life and wanting to get away might end up in the exotic sounding "Kathmandu." It turns out, trekking wasn't all what I expected. It was better.

We decided that my first trek should be fairly short to hedge our bets in case I hated it. Four nights, 5 days on what is called the ABC trek. Annapurna Base camp trek. Due to lack of cold weather gear, we opted out of trekking to the actual base camp of one of the 10 highest mountains on earth. It would have also added a few extra days to the trip. Instead we did the lower loop of the ABC and saw the striking Himalayan mountains from slightly further away, although it was still amazingly close.

We hired a porter named Krishna through the Sisne Rover trekking company in Pokara. Fairly young, 27, Krishna had been a porter for 11 years. He spoke decent English and was patient and mild mannered. Our first day, we took the local bus to Nayapul. There we were forced to pay a fine to the Maoist rebel forces before proceeding with the trek. Having just finished Wild Swans by Jung Chang in which I learned more the details of Mao's unprecedented crimes (or as the Communist party calls them, "mistakes") against humanity, it was painful to fork up dough to a group with Mao as their namesake.

I didn't realize this before, but trekking is just the word for walking on trails in Nepal. Of course, there's no flat part of these trails. It's either steep up or down, so the verb "to walk" doesn't capture the challenge as well as "to trek." The first day was a bit hellish because I haven't formally exercised since I embarked on this trip 4 months ago. I sweat buckets, ached everywhere, and was absolutely ravenous when we stopped for lunch. Once I got over the initial pains, I really enjoyed the fresh air and the scenery. I was not encumbered by a pack, thanks to Krishna, and by day two I was eager for more.

We saw incredible views of Annapurna I, Annapurna South, Dalleghieri, Fishtail mountain, and others. After our visit to Poon Hill, a famous viewing point, Aaron awarded me with a merit badge in trekking. It was a proud moment ;)

On day 3 we were literally surrounded by monkeys for a spell, and learned later that they were the common Langur. They were really large, as big as a German Shepherd, and lept across the trail path when alerted to our presence. I didn't have time to snap a picture, but I'll never forget that moment. The late morning involved a torrential down pour that culminated in our extending the trek by a day. We were already at a high altitude but the weather made it even colder. We spent the day at a lodge trying desperately to get warm. I slept with a bottle of boiling hot water at my feet and still shivered all night long.

The next day was all down hill, and my feet and knees were aching when we arrived in Ghorepani. We decided to spend a more lazy day, finishing the hike at 11am. I read while Aaron planned out the remainder of our trip. An interesting feature of the day was the Nepalese festival of Dapaoli. It's called the brother sister festival, which coincidentally falls on my brother's birthday. During this festival people celebrate their dogs, then their cows, and finally their siblings. Quickly we realized that the celebrations mostly involved children "singing" toneless songs and asking for money. Actually, as time went by the children demanded money. Hordes of children stopped our bus by blocking the road. If the bus plowed through or didn't pay, they would throw rocks as we passed. A little obnoxious, n'est pas? While we were on foot we got away with giving them sweets or ignoring them completely.  

Our last day of the trek had a couple of hours walking on relatively flat terrain. This gave us a chance to have more conversation, which was perfect after 4 days of thinking to yourself during the hikes. Finally, we rode back to Pokara with Krishna, who bought us green oranges on the bus. Yeah, in Nepal oranges are green. Weird, right?

Posted by Nelle at 07:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Of the 4 countries we've visited, Nepal has the greatest selection of foods. Nearly every restaurant will have a continental food section, and french fries are available everywhere for those culinary cowards - for the first week, I counted myself among them. These days it's rare for me to have any dish with a name I can pronounce.

The classic Dahl Bat dish of lentils, vegetable curry, sometimes bean curry, garlic spinach, a crispy, thin bread, and many unidentifiable sauces on the side. At most restaurants, this is an all you can eat feast because they will refill your dish as often as you like. We read that it is impolite to ask for more than you can eat. The best part is that you can get all this for 1 or 2 dollars. It isn't a spicy dish, at least not the way that they prepare it for us. It actually reminds me a lot of Mexican food...always a good thing.

Recently I've been branching out to Indian dishes. I'm sure I'll have much more opportunity for this when I actually go to India, but for now I'm enjoying various khorma and papad dishes. I haven't yet mastered the art of eating with my hands. This mostly stems from a desire to avoid illness...ok I'll just say it...I'm germ-phobic, and washing your hands in water that will give you diarrhea is simply not a comforting thought.

In any case, our low key schedule means that eating is a big part of the trip. I'll definitely pick up a Nepalese cookbook while I'm here!

Posted by Nelle at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I first arrived at night in Kathmandu it was all chaos, yet I was still unprepared for the chaos of the next morning. We stepped out of our hotel room, and I was positively beaming. It was complete sensation overload. The bright colors of textiles, the sheen of brass and copper crafts and jewelry, the smell of incense burning in store entrances, and the harsh sound of street "musicians" selling small instruments.

The sun shone down as brightly as I smiled at each and every passer by. So many greeted me with "Namaste," and, though I still don't know the literal meaning of this word, I replied, "Namaastay!" It didn't take long for us to make several friends, Shree, who offered us a free map and to help us find a hotel, and Bisho who wanted to hook us up with trekking information. Our new friends were very friendly, in fact they followed us everywhere. We went to lunch and turned around to find Bisho had followed us in and waited for us to finish while sitting at the next table. This was my first taste of pushy Nepali touts, a.k.a. STALKERS!

Not to give the wrong impression, there's nothing dangerous about these people touting goods and services of one kind or another. It's just that they are annoying, time consuming, and if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile (make that a kilometer, we're in Nepal after all!). Consequently, our first two days in Thamel were spent being dragged into tourist offices by Shree and Bisho. What's worse, they were fiercely competitive with each other and tried to make us feel guilty for being with anyone but themselves. As if I wanted to be entrapped by either of them! A warning to the starry eyed traveler of Nepal...brush up on your cold shoulder technique if you want to have any control over your time and money.

We weathered that storm, and I'm even starting to recover from the realization that all of these friendly Nepalese people only want me for my money. These days Thamel is more mobbed by tourists anyway and this takes the attention off of me. Now I'm free to window shop and walk the streets at my leisure. I'm also very willing to shop for people back home and send it. You can email me if you're interested!

Posted by Nelle at 06:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)