Chitwan

Today is my first day back in Kathmandu after a long weekend in Chitwan National Park with 8 other interns. We left at 6 am Friday morning, on a rickety, jam-packed bus, and made our way down incredibly steep hillsides to the lowlands of Nepal. Kathmandu is located in a valley, so once the bus climbs up over the small foothills surrounding the city, the view opens up onto a massive expanse of very steep and very green hillsides.

Due to mining and farming, these hills are carved into steppes, and the farmers have also created thousands of little stone pathways up the hills, that all come out at this one road. The road that we followed was a supposed 2-lane road that went straight down the hillside towards the bottom of the valley, completely lacking any guardrails. And the traffic is almost the exact same as in the center of Kathmandu--motorcycles, trucks and massive tourist buses all fight for the right away down this hill, often resulting in a major accident. In fact, as we were driving, a truck went over the edge, flipping and coming to a stop at the bottom of a sheer 45 ft. cliff, near the river.

We finally made our way to Chitwan, where we were picked up by a jeep and taken to a lodge in a little village named Terai. At the Hotel Jungle Lodge, we were presented with Tang, hibiscus flowers and bindis, and shown our rooms (little wood huts.) After cleaning up, we walked around the village, which was incredibly poor. The natives are known as the Tharu, and for the most part, they live in mud/straw huts with thatched roofs. In this part of town, malaria is rampant, and as we were walking, we came across many underfed children washing their dishes with mud.
After the walk, we ate dinner and went to a Tharu Community Welcome Dance, and then crawled under our malaria nets and tried to sleep. Nepal is a country that starts early and ends early. Every morning in Chitwan, we were woken at 6am, and anywhere (even in Kathmandu), everything closes at about 8:30 pm. So, after an early breakfast, we canoed down the river that runs through Terai, hoping to see crocodiles (there weren't any.) We did barely see Anapurna though, and the other mountains in the range. Then we walked back through the jungle, hoping to see tigers and rhinocerouses--neither were seen either, but we did see a spotted deer which was...more than fascinating.

After we ate lunch, we washed the elephants in the river. We got in our swimsuits, and were allowed to climb up ontop the elephants (bareback) and then the elephant trainer told the elephant to fall over into the water, and we did everything we could to hold on. The water was amazing, even though we were downstream from other elephants depositing their fecal matter, and after the bath, we went on an elephant trek through the woods. I would like to say that I'm not afraid of heights, and I never really have been. And that the height of the elephant didn't really bother me. But every so often, when the elephant would shrug? And the little chair ontop that four of us were perched on shifted drastically downwards, sending us oh, so close to flying off? Made the ride absolutely horrifying. Oh, right, and that moment when our elephant started charging another elephant in the jungle. Oh. My. God.

The worst part about the ride, and the whole elephant experience, was the fact that the people who own the elephants a.) know close to nothing about animals and b.) do not care about the animals in the slightest. Everything in Chitwan focuses around the breeding of the elephants, and they have areas where they keep the elephants specifically for breeding so that they don't have to domesticate wild ones. The owners range from old men, stuck in their ways, to bratty teenagers, trying to prove their manhood. They use, get this, bamboo sticks, things that look like fire pokers (but with an extra spike), and even hatchets to try to control to elephants. The elephants have scars and massive holes all over their ears and bodies. If the elephant tries to graze, the owner just wails on its head, beating it until often, the elephant rears up, trying to throw the owner off. Every once in a while, an owner is killed--the elephant will literally tear his body to pieces. And the people we talked to would agree he deserved it.

Chitwan was beautiful--it is the stereotypical paradise. But after 4 days (we had to stay an extra night because the Maoists were striking again, and again, the buses were closed), we were dying to get back to Kathmandu.