Chitwan – An unexpected early stop

After lunch with the monks, I asked the guy from the monastery if buses were going to Tansen (a stop to spend the night on the way to Pokhara). He told me that there were buses all day long. So I didn’t worry. Buses from Lumbini to Bhairawa make 22 Km’s in one hour of a bit more. This was the case. After catching the bus around 2 p.m. and then a shared jeep that would drop me at the Bus Park in Bhairawa, I would be able to get my bus to Tansen. Well, arriving to the tickets counter a guy told me that the last bus of the day departed 20 minutes ago. So, I had to change to plan B as I didn’t want to spend another night in Bhairawa. So, Lonely Planet in hand I started looking for interesting locations on the route and one of those was Sauraha where the National Park of Chitwan is located. The plan B was going to work this way: Taking a bus to Tandi and from Tandi a taxi (for 600 NPR’s) that would take me to Chitwan. With nothing to lose, I decided to give it a try.

I jumped in the bus which and after 5 hours I was in Tandi. It was already 9:30 p.m. , the guys in charge of collecting the money from the passengers pointed at a long street and they told me that Sauraha was on the direction of a long and dark street 6 km’s farther. Standing there, I crossed the street towards the street. On both corners of the street there were two little grocery stores. The one on the left corner looked more friendly that the other one. So talking to the lady and the guy there, the guy offered me to take me on his pickup truck for 600 NPR’s to my hotel in Sauraha.

From the LP, I had already made a choice to take a look at the Jungle Traveller’s hotel. It was a very cozy, clean hotel. All rooms faced a big garden and there were two elephants on the back to play with on your free time in the late afternoon. I met a couple of Ukrainian guys in the garden. I joined them for a couple of beers before I crashed on my bed for the night.

Next morning, it was time to explore what to do in the National Park. A guide working at the hotel made me a budget for activities for the next day. I needed to benchmark it before deciding. But first, I had time to go and see the elephants bathing on the river and also climb onto one of them and let him take me to the river, splash me with water from his trunk to finally drop on his side and let me also drop with him in the river. A very fun experience for only 100 NPR’s.

In the afternoon, I decided to set the activities for the next day and negotiate the final price with the guide. My schedule was to do a jungle walk in the morning and a jeep safari in the afternoon. The jungle walk was a bit of the risk as you enter in a wild area. There have been recorded stories of wild animals (such as a Rhino, a tiger or a bear) attacking tourists, but according to the guides what they can recall are guides attacked and killed. Praying to God that nothing would happen to me, I decided to give it a chance.

Next morning, I woke up at 5:00 so I could be ready at 6:30 after breakfast so I could be taken to the reserve. A 5-minute walk to the river, a short canoe trip to cross the river and a little 5-minute walk to the entrance of the reserve was everything that it took to start. At the entrance of the forest, I received another warning and a few “survival tips” in case we came across a bear (who will attack directly the face), a tiger or a rhino. So, there we went. Praying again that nothing would happened and I think that God listened clearly to my prayers because during the whole walk we didn’t see any animals at all with the exception of some birds and of course butterfly and insects. The closest that I was from a tiger was its footprint on the sand and from a Rhino a pile of shit that they left everywhere. It was getting a bit less challenging until we came across with another group who were standing looking at a pond. There at a distance of approximately 100 m. there were two rhinos bathing moving only their ears. We stayed there staring at them for a while and then we continued the journey. We didn’t see any more animals during the rest of the trip but it was an interesting 2.5 hours experience being immersed in the reserve.

That afternoon I went to have lunch in a restaurant owned by a family where they prepared everything fresh. After ordering, the son of the owner went on his motorcycle to get what he needed to prepare the food. It took a while until everything was ready but the food was amazingly well made. By the end of the my stay in Sauraha I came back once again to this restaurant called Sweet Memory to experience the amazing flavors that they prepared for me.

After lunch, I went to do the 5-hour jeep safari. This time we got immersed farther in the reserve. It was a quite safari, we could see this time several deer and birds and more rhinos. Although, it had not been possible to see a whole rhino, only parts of them because they were either immersed in the water or camouflaged by the hay, on my way back to the hotel I saw one, one that was standing there in the middle of the way. It was made of steel and it was the symbol of the town. Now, I could go back to the hotel saying that at least I saw one entirely. This is the picture:

That night I stayed at the hotel and I went to bed early. Next day I was planning to go a bit up in the mountains, to the city of Pokhara.