Paragliding and elephants

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Trip Start Sep 11, 2009 Previous
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  Sauraha, Nepal
Sunday, December 6, 2009

As promised the rest of my story!

I went to Pokhara just for one day for one hour of paragliding. It was nice to be back in a place where I didn't need to find out where the cheapiest and best food is and where a good hotel is or what to have to pay for the bus to get me to the right place. I booked the paragliding for the following morning and just relaxed the rest of the day. Oh yeah we had an accident on the way. Our experienced driver, the dude was probably not older than 18, drove into a motorbike. Luckily he was also braking so no one got hurt and there was only a little bit of damage to the motorbike. The paragliding was really really cool. My pilot Peter was very experienced, unlike the busdriver, and took off and landed perfectly . The goal is to find some good thermals to keep going up, which he did. The most amazing part of the paragliding was flying there with the big birds of prey, who are the true masters of the sky. I say that because they are much much better at finding the thermals than we are, but I still have to give Peter credits for his efforts.

After the paragliding I went straight to the bus station for my trip to Bandipur. I didn't feel so good actually after the paragliding, but I will save you the toilet stories. If it was from the paragliding or something I ate I don't know, but it wasn't pretty. In the bus Bandipur I met Ester and Dave, from Germany and UK, and spent some time with them in Bandipur. Played some chess with Dave while enjoying a beer and visited a cave nearby Bandipur. On the day that they left we also visited a silk farm which was pretty interesting. Apparantly they kill the worms while they are still in the cocoon, because they need the entire cocoon to be intact. You need 6 to 7 kilos of cocoons to make one kilo of silk. Farmers in Nepal receive about 200 Rs (2 euro) per kilo of cocoons that they deliver to the silk factory.

I moved on to my final destination in Nepal, where I am now still, which is Chitwan National Park. On the jeep to the town where I am staying I met a group of people who just finished a rafting trip. I teamed up with one of them, Jordi, to share a room together. That evening we ordered food which took 1,5 hour to arrive... We were wondering why the cook was all the time leaving the restaurant, but he was buying ingredients ;). The next day we went for an elephant ride, which was terrific! Two rhinos, couple of deer and just the experience of sitting on an elephant, amazing! In the afternoon we went for a canoeying trip and saw some birds and crocodiles. The day was concluded with a jungle walk of 2,5 hours were we came face to face with a rhino. It was perhaps 25 meters away in the bushes so we had to keep our distance. Luckily it didn't attack and we continued on our walk seeing some small animals, but nothing like that rhino again. The next morning I went to the elephant breeding center to see some cute little elephants who could walk freely around and were very playful. From 10 - 12 there is elephant bathing in the town so I went up there in my swimming shorts and washed an elephant! Well she washed me more than I her, but it was lots of fun to do it. Today I wanted to leave Chitwan, but there is a busstrike, so I couldn't go. I relaxed today a bit, hired a bicycle and just drove along some villages around here. About 90% of the people here are farmers and it is really nice to drive along their fields. I also visited some lakes nearby before I jumped into the internetcafe where I am now to write my blog. My next entry will be from India again. Next stop is Darjeeling and then on to Kolkotta and Chennai!

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