Rest day at Chitwan
Trip Start
Apr 29, 2006
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Trip End
Nov 15, 2007
Where I stayed
Rainbow Safari Resort
Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Rest day at Rainbow Safari Resort
During the drive from Pokhara to Chitwan National Park, we encountered all sorts of road and traffic conditions, much of which was very dangerous. There were not so many cars on the roads, mainly busses, trucks, bikes, people and wildlife. But there were a couple of instances on the trip I'd like to mention.
The funniest thing we saw, was a goat 'car surfing'. It had been tied to the roof rack of a van by the collar on its' neck and had to balance on its feet, on the roof, around all the windy roads through Nepal. We passed it a couple of times and it didn't look too stressed. Des thought the goat might be enjoying the wind in his hair. It turned out we were to see this on several occasions and were told later of the big Hindu festival of Dashain at which time animals are killed for the usually vegetarian Hindu people.
We also saw a young lad take his goat onto the local bus, not an uncommon sight here, but I can just see our friend Graeme Hall, bus driver for Trans Adelaide, allowing a goat onto his bus. The busses here are used by the people as delivery vans too as many people have no transport of their own. The driver patiently helps the people load beds, motor bikes, crates of chickens virtually anything onto the large roof racks of the bus. I saw a water buffalo tied down to the roof rack of a bus in Kathmandu, also for the Hindu festival I suppose. I don't think there can be a timetable as we know it, for the busses, but there are lots of buses coming along all the time. Our two vehicles have even been hailed many times, being mistaken for small local transport vehicles.
Des had to swerve hard to miss an old man walking aimlessly across the road. Des had tooted a few times, but he seemed to take no notice. It's no wonder really, there's a lot of tooting on these difficult roads. The man was half way across the road and there was a vehicle coming in the other direction. I thought the camper was going to come away from the tray of the utility, the swerve was so severe. All turned out OK until we arrived at the Rainbow Safari Resort. Des had to get some gear out of the camper, when he noticed the fridge door had come undone and a bottle of beer was broken inside the van along with a loose capped coke bottle. Oh, the mess! Coke and beer were everywhere and the beer bottle was in a million pieces. I'm afraid I wasn't too patient with the usual crowd of onlookers and asked them if they had anything else to do!
It's tiring traveling to new places almost every day, and with the high humidity of the jungle, I was just about over the top. I had to force myself to get the mess cleaned up only to notice that the fridge had become warm due to the open door and the butter had melted through all the racks and onto everything which remained in the fridge, which wasn't much of course. On the bright side, the fridge is only small, so the whole clean up job only took me a couple of hours in the stifling heat and humidity.
So, the 24th was our day off in the resort, getting our flight to Mt Everest sorted with Prakash. We had a nice quiet day and met with fellow travelers Kath, Ian and Mark from England, who have been working and traveling for 2 years already and are now off on an 8 day rafting trip. That's the beauty of staying in guest houses and the like, you get to meet other travelers and exchange ideas. We asked an Irish guy Dwyer and his traveling companion, whose name I never found out, but he was a Harry Potter look-alike about travel through China in our own car. We have already deduced that it's not possible for us at this time but we were surprised to hear that the permit and guide to drive in one's own car through China, is an amazing $6,000US and takes about 9 months to get. They obviously don't want us there. Also we know we are unable to enter Myanmar with our own car from India. Our choice has been narrowed to putting the vehicles on a container ship to Thailand and meeting them there.
I've washed out a few clothes at the resort, but they're having a hard time drying due to the high humidity. It must be a tough life for the people in the jungle with all the insects, heat, and rainfall. I don't envy their lifestyle.
