In the jungle of Chitwan National Park

by Vincent

Kids playing close to the rice plantations

Typical houses in a village

Woman at work

Sunset...

An elephant and its baby of 6 days in a breeding center

The jungle!

Following the guide and trying to spot animals...

Workers coming back from the jungle where they cut herbs

A tiger track!

Beautiful flowers

The popular bath of the elephants that tourists can enjoy as well

A termite nest

Crocodiles! These ones were in a breeding center (sponsored by Lacoste, with the slogan "Save your logo"!) but we also saw some more in the nature.

Elephant at sunrise

Elephant safari in the jungle. Not so comfortable after 45min!

A rhino ready for a bath

Bambi!

Because of the problem with my knee, I wasn't able to do my initial plans of trekking in the Everest region an somewhere else in Nepal. Moreover, Berit had left a few days before so I was alone. I was supposed to stay one or two more months in Nepal. There was not so many solutions for me to replace my initial plans. There is not much to do in Nepal if you can't trek in the mountains. I wasn't really excited to travel to another country close to Nepal either. I was tempted a moment to go to Tibet but it is so complicated and expensive! It is impossible to cross the Nepal-Tibet border independently, you have to cross it with a travel agency, which means that you have to take a tour which consists in staying in a bus during a week and visiting Lhasa for 750€! This is definitely not my thing. If one day I go to Tibet, I think it will be to the Mansarovar lake and the Mount Kailas, starting by a long trek from the West of Nepal. So finally I decided to stay 2 more weeks to discover others places of interest in Nepal. I had spent some time planning these 2 weeks and had decided of a date to return to France. But when I went to the offices of Qatar Airways to change the date of my flight ticket, the woman told me there were only two flights with free seats: one 3 days before and one 4 days later... So I had to shorten even more my trip.

The first destination of the rest of my trip was Chitwan National Park. Nepal is very famous all over the world for its mountains but not many people know that there are also jungles! Chitwan National Park is at an elevation of 150m (so 8700m less than Everest) and has an area of 932km². There are many things to do in the park and during the two days I stayed there, I tried a few of them. The walk in the jungle is one of the most popular but some people prefer not to do it after reading about the risks in their guidebook...

There are two guides for a group of tourists doing a walk in the jungle: one at the front and one at the back. The only thing they have to protect you is a bamboo stick. Since I was alone in my group, I had two guides just for me! When we started entering the jungle, one of the guide stopped and started to talk about the various risks, the potential dangerous animals and the way to react in case you meet an animal which is not happy about your presence:

• rhinos: climb in a tree or hide behind a tree and expect the rhino to charge the tree a few times. If you don't find a tree, run in zigzag!
• sloth bears: don't run, stay in group and let the guide hit the ground with its stick to frighten him.
• elephants: run run run!!!
• tigers: don't run, look the animal in its eyes and move back slowly.

After this little explanation at the beginning of the safari, the only thing you hope is that you will actually not meet any animal! Especially the tigers: how can you stay in front of a tiger looking in its eyes? During the walk, every cracking sound of a branch made my heart beat stronger! But finally, like most of the safaris I did before, we didn't meet so many animals during the walk: some peacocks, some dears, some wild chickens, some nice birds (the kingfisher for example), some monkeys and a sleepy rhino. But I also did a Jeep and an Elephant safari which allowed me to see more creatures.