We went to Chitwan National Park for Easter weekend. Chitwan is down on the Terai - the low-lying region neighbouring India. It was hot and tropical. Chitwan has rhinos, tigers, leopards, and elephants.
We went on a package that included a canoe ride (where we saw crocodiles), a jeep ride (where we saw a rhino and a bison), an elephant safari (where we saw deer, monkeys and 2 more rhinos) and a guided walk (where we saw another rhino). One of the other people on our elephant got stung by a nettle while on the elephant back! And I thought Scottish nettles were big.
The best day was the last one, we went for a walk by ourselves and sat by the river. Marc watched for crocodiles while I paddled. It was really quiet and pretty soon we were surrounded by kingfishers and sand martins, little fish and butterflies. We even saw a mongoose. We were a bit nervous that a tiger or a rhino would sneak up on us, and as we got up to leave we saw an elephant had approached the other side of the river behind us. We didn't even hear it. I guess you don't stand a chance if a tiger wants to sneak up on you! It was amazing seeing the elephant in the wild.
Actually we weren't really by ourselves, a dog decided to come for a walk with us. It followed us around and sat on the bank as I paddled. It's quite nice to be adopted by a dog for a while - except for when it decided to chase some goats and they ran all the way back to the village - the herder had to run after them. We tried to look like it wasn't our dog, but it kept making us look guilty by running after us as we tried to sneak away!
Seeing the rhino from elephant-back was cool too, except there were people on another elephant who decided they wanted the rhinos to do something and started throwing sticks at them. Firstly, isn't enough to see them happily wallowing? And secondly, why would you want an angry rhino 20 m away when you are on an elephant? It was really disappointing that people are so stupid.
We tried elephant bathing as well. The domestic elephants are brought down to the river and you can climb on the back of one. It sprays you with water from its trunk and then tips you into the water. We had the misfortune to climb on the biggest bull elephant. As it stood up, we realised how big it was - we were so high! I was really freaked out, and we got tipped into the river from a huge height! We noticed later that most people who were enjoying themselves were on elephants half the size of ours, and those who went on the same elephant as us, didn't hang around long after they'd been tipped into the river!
Unfortunately it wasn't the settings on our camera that made our pictures at Nagarkot bright - now it only takes completely white photos. It takes movies ok although there is a bit of a pink tinge to them. Such a shame we didn't get any nice pictures of the rhinos.
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