Elephant Bath

I came to Nepal with two main objectives. The first, and more challenging of the two, was to visit the Base Camp of Mount Everest. The second was to spend a few days in the Royal Chitwan National Park in Southern Nepal. I arranged the trip earlier this week and headed off this morning on a bus to Bahratpur, the nearest city to Chitwan National Park.

After a quick lunch in Bahratpur I rode in a rickety jeep into the park with a Nepali driver. It always amazes me how far a little bit of money will go in developing countries. For an all-inclusive three day tour of Chitwan National Park, including transportation to and from Kathmandu and two nights accomodation at the “Island Jungle Resort”, I paid only $150. In a more developed country the hour-long jeep ride from Bahratpur into the park might cost $150 alone.

Elephant bathing is one of the feature attractions at the Island Jungle Resort. The resort has four elephants that they use to give visitors tours of the jungle on, and once a day they bring the elephants to a bend in the river near the resort to be bathed. Since it's the off-season there were only five other visitors at the resort today, which allowed plenty of time for each person to get to know one of the elephants. An elephant driver lowered one of the animals into the river and I climbed on and rode the thing bare-back. The elephant stood up in the river and used it's trunk to throw giant splashes of water on it's back. I got completely drenched, of course, and the Nepali driver stood on the back of the elephant behind me and laughed the whole time. Next to me one of the drivers had jumped off an elephant and was letting a French girl ride the thing by herself.Wild rhinos and tigers are everywhere in Chitwan and one of the main reasons I came was to see one of the creatures in the jungle. This afternoon a Nepali driver and I ventured into the jungle on the back of one of the elephants to search for wildlife. In 2006 I rode on an elephant in Laos, but I have to say that this time the experience was much more legitimate. There were a few small trails that the driver followed but occasionally he steered the elephant off the trail and blazed a new path through the jungle. The elephant used it's trunk to snap away tree branches and clear away growth when necessary and we slowly made our way through the jungle. Occasionally we came to large clearings in the trees that were filled with grass that was about ten feet tall. I was instantly reminded of the movie “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” and wondered if Disney could have saved a whole lot of money by filming the movie in Nepal instead of creating their own set.There is plenty of wildlife in Chitwan, but unfortunately I only saw a few of the smaller animals today. I saw a few peacocks from a distance and I also saw plenty of monkeys and spotted deer. It's funny to me that some people consider spotted deer to be a wildlife sighting. I'm so used to seeing the animals just wandering around up in the Avenues in Salt Lake that it doesn't feel exotic at all to see them in foriegn countries. If anything it makes me feel like I'm closer to home. To me a full-grown rhino is a real wildlife sighting. I don't think I'll ever see one of those in the Avenues unless one escapes from Hogle Zoo.

Tonight I had dinner with the five other travelers at the resort and then watched fireflys at night. Once it got dark we could see the fireflys everywhere. There were so many of them that several landed on my shirt and pants as I watched others floating around in the distance. Someone pointed out the view across the river and I went over to watch with a couple of others. Hundreds of fireflys lit up the entire jungle in the distance, and the three of us watched the show for an hour before finally calling it a night.