David and Edel

We arrived off the bus in Chitwan and were greeted by 20-30 different touts all trying to bring us to their jungle lodge – it felt more like India than the peaceful Nepal we’d gotten used to, though this is the hotter lowlands of course. Edel managed to filter out the guy for the place we had picked just before they all had driven us mad. We organized our plans for the next couple days, full-day trek in the park, elephant-back safari, short trip on the river and a night in a watchtower, before heading off to a nearby Elephant Breeding Center in the afternoon. There were several very young elephants there at the moment, adorably cute, and walking around the center freely so we could get very close and even have them eating from our hands. Next day into the park proper.

Chitwan national park was formerly called Royal Chitwan National Park until the Nepali crown prince massacred most of the royal family (himself included, though he spent 3 days as king while in coma) followed by which the Maoist Communists got the monarchy overthrown a few years later…Nepal can be a volatile country. The park is most famous as a stronghold for the Indian rhino – one of the success stories of conservation with numbers down to just 100 a century ago but now recovered to about 2500. 400 or so rhinos live in this park and it’s a major tourist attraction in Nepal, which has stationed a full army battalion there to protect them from poachers (who are after the horn for useless Chinese traditional medicine..even though it’s the same substance as toe-nail clippings). Some rhinos still get killed each year, but at least not as many as in years when all army resources are busy fighting the Maoists.. Other rhinos haven’t been this “lucky”..the Java one is down to a couple dozen, the Sumatra one a couple hundred, and the West African Black Rhino went extinct a year or two ago.

Edel and guide navigating the tall grass in Chitwan National Park.

We started the day with a short trip on the river in a dugout canoe, and saw yet another critically endangered species – the Gharial, a very strange fish-eating 5-6 meter crocodile with a long narrow snout. This one’s down to a few hundred pairs, and is dying out because of some of the same reasons that makes it a terribly bad idea to take a swim in the holy Ganges river.. After we got out of the boat the guide gave us a briefing before heading in on foot into rhino-country. He sounded a bit like a broken record, starting off with “Dear guests, I hope you will enjoy this jungle walk..” even though it was just me and Edel there. Next he gave us a list of tips for how not to get killed by a charging rhino – in descending order of preference based on tree availability: “1. Climb a tree, 2. Hide behind a tree, 3. Run fast in a zigzag pattern and hope for the best“. Usually these things are very exaggerated but the guidebook does point out this park can actually be a little dangerous, and that it can be difficult to find a guide with more than a couple years experience as “…anyone with a bit of sense gets out as soon as he can“. Our guide had been doing it for 20 years! He continued on with explaining that it was also important not to get killed by a tiger, wild elephant, or a sloth bear – though more difficult as these can all either climb trees or topple them over.

Rhino-less in the rain.

We didn’t see either of these animals on the walk, but did see droppings, diggings, paths and footprints from all of them. The most exciting moment was when a group of deer came crashing towards us in panic clearly frightened by something! We didn’t see what exactly, but it was in the middle of the day so nap-time for any big kittens. Other animals we saw were barking deer, hog deer, chital, macaques, wild boar, adjutant stork and monitor lizards. The forest was a real “jungle”, not like other lowland rainforests we’ve been to elsewhere where the canopy is so closed hardly any light filters down below and ground-level is pretty open – here it was near impenetrable on the ground with lianas and other vegetation. But it was actually even harder to walk on the grasslands – the grass here grows 4-5 meter high this time of the year so it’s not the best time to see animals (the rhino could be two meter away and you wouldn’t see it!). We were walking on a road through the grasslands, but it was so overgrown that we got our arms cut open making our way through the grass. Harder work than climbing mountains in Annapurna even though it was all flat – it was hot and extremely humid with thunder hanging in the air (this turned out to be the last day before the monsoon finally kicked in).

Rhinos in Chitwan national park.

We’ve been very lucky with the timing so far elsewhere, getting the good weather without the crowds in Andaman islands and most other places in India plus in Annapurna in Nepal – but now it seems the luck had finally run out. The pre-monsoon heat made the jungle-trek exhausting and it wasn’t the good time of the year to see animals, and the next day when we set off in the morning on elephant back to see the rhinos it was pouring rain. We sat in the gentle rolling high up on the back of the elephant in the rain for three hours, searching through a section of forest where they usually hang out, without seeing a single one. It’s virtually guaranteed to see one – everyone who goes to Chitwan does – and the elephant driver seemed as surprised as we and our cameras were wet.. We went back in again in the afternoon when the rains held up a little, and this time we saw seven rhinos in just one hour. Though one of the biggest rhino species they looked almost small from high up on the elephant, and mostly they took very little notice of us. I imagine it’s probably a very different experience to see one while you’re on foot.. We saw two by a water hole, four in an open grass area and another in a different water hole – all places we’d been a couple hours earlier without seeing a single one. Where do rhinos hide when it rains? Maybe they can climb trees after all… This time we had ended up with a big crowd of Indian tourists split on four elephants – we shared the tiny platform on top of our elephant with three of them. They all took several times more photos of us than they did of any of the rhinos..felt almost like being back in India again!

In the evening we went to spend the night in a watch tower in the jungle. We didn’t see many animals, and managed to miss the rhinos again as they were seen by the tower by two other tourists just while we were gone for a dusk walk, but the sounds of the jungle during the night were fantastic. The calls of frogs, crickets and many different birds. We fell asleep on the wooden platform outside of the room while watching hundreds of fireflies move between the trees close to the tower.

Elephant babies playing by Sauraha near Chitwan.

The best news of the year so far is – as of 6th of July at 6.57 pm -David and I have a new nephew 🙂 Mr. Daniel Matthew Glynn. Wohoo!

Big Hugs from us to Super Mammy June, Daddy Aidan and Big Bro James.

Daniel Matthew

Edel rowing on the Phewa Tal lake by Pokhara.

Pokhara in Nepal is described as a great place to relax after a long hard trek or any time spent in India, and it is. At 800 meters altitude it’s pleasantly cool, and it’s been on the backpacker trail so long there’s apple pie on every menu. It wasn’t too difficult to get here from Varanasi, one day in a jeep to leave India and one day on the bus to climb the Nepali hills. We’d bought a combined ticket for the whole way in Varanasi, which would include one nights accommodation in the little border town of Sunauli, but considering our success with tourist buses so far we only really expected the first leg of the journey to actually materialize – if we’d make it as far as the border we’d be happy. When they told us in the morning that the bus for the first day had been swapped for a jeep because there were only 14 tourists traveling that day Edel was placing all bets on them planning to cram all 14 of us into a standard 4-seater, but when the jeep arrived things looked slightly better. It could probably fit 11 people comfortably, 14 rather uncomfortably or about 60 Indian-style (14 people I’m sure we’ve seen emerge from a single tuktuk). 9 bouncy hard-seat hours later we were in Sunauli (the hostel was pretty dirty even by Indian standards but we did get our own room+bathroom), and in the morning after sorting our the border formalities we were landed on a public bus to Pokhara. I made a good friend on the bus, and older woman who was sitting next to us (an extra row of seats filled the aisle) kept talking to me even though we didn’t share a common language. We still managed to crack some jokes using mostly sign language, about our shared hope that the race-car driver wouldn’t send us crashing into the ravine, and about the drunk sleeping on my shoulder..

Like clockwork at the start of our third month traveling I got my third round of fever and dysentery. Since arriving in Pokhara a few days earlier I had put myself on a healthy diet of mostly chocolate brownies and ice-cream, so I suspect it must have been a good-bye present from India.. Once cured we lazed around a number of days in Pokhara, before organizing a 10-day trek in the Annapurna mountain range together with a guide and a porter found through the guesthouse where we were staying. One of the days before setting off the Maoists were demonstrating in Pokhara – they were marching on the street and had ordered every business in town closed. One restaurant that still kept open in secret would only let us in through the door after first looking both ways outside, then opening the door only slightly so we could just barely squeeze in. We asked different people later about the demonstration, but most of them seemed a little edgy talking about it.

Waterfall near Thikhedhunga.

The Annapurna Sanctuary trek starts at about 1050 meter and climbs up to the Annapurna Base Camp at 4150 meter – the base camp is located in a hidden valley surrounded on all sides by mountains 6000-8000 meter high. Two of the peaks visible from the basecamp are over 8000 meter; Annapurna I at 8091m and Dhaulagiri at 8167m, ranked the 10th and 7th highest in the world. Annapurna I was actually the first of the worlds 14 eight-thousanders to be climbed, in 1950, and is still the most deadly claiming more than every third climber. Basecamp is of course perfectly safe to get to though, and the trek is a “tea-house trek”, meaning there are villages or little guest-houses along the way where you can stay without having to camp out. We’re timing this perfect for the season to be over – June here brings the monsoon with rains and leeches, but also empty trails and guest-houses and lots of wild-flowers. The first day was easy, sleeping in the village Thikhedhunga at 1500m after a 4 hour trek passing terraced rice fields and cute little villages on the way. On the second day we climbed another 1300 meter to Ghorephani at 2800m, passing more picturesque villages, Ulleri, Banthati, Nagathati, on the way. The first half was pretty hard, stone stair-cases the whole way up the mountain between the villages and no flat sections – higher up the landscape changed to forest, it got cooler and the climbing was less steep. The forest was gorgeous with the trees covered in moss,  ferns and other epiphytes, and orchids in bloom on many of the branches.

Orchids in the Annapurna forest.

Wildflowers by Poon Hill.

Day three we started climbing at 4:30am, to get to the 3200 meter Poon Hill for sunrise (something that’s only 3200 meter high doesn’t get to be called a mountain in Nepal). There were about 12 other people hiking up the same morning, apparently it can be about 300 in high season..wouldn’t have wanted to climb the small viewing tower on top of the hill with a crowd that size. The sunrise was stunning, the rays of light slowly creeping over the 6993 meter Machhapuchhre (fish-tail) mountain in the distance. It sometimes gets clouded over in this season, so we felt very lucky to have perfect views. Down again to Ghorephani for breakfast, then up once more to 3200m in the other direction, then down to about 2500m before finally climbing up to the village Tadapani at 2700m. After the 2nd day we had felt great about the progress, having climbed 1.3 km up to 2800m there would only be another 1.3km climbing left to basecamp! But that’s not how trekking works around here – as the guides say “a little bit up, a little bit down” – during day 3 we had climbed over a kilometer but still ended up lower than when we started..and it wouldn’t be the last day like this as there were several deep river valleys to cross before we would get close to the hidden Annapurna Sanctuary valley and the basecamp. There were plenty of things along the way to make sure we enjoyed every step though – the walk across the hills to Tadapani had passed through some beautiful misty rhododendron forests.

Sunrise over Machhapuchhre (fishtail mountain) from Poon Hill.

View towards Dhaulagiri from Poon Hill.

Day four of the trek was Edel’s birthday – we celebrated with chocolate and by taking the afternoon off after climbing half a kilometer 😀 We crossed a river at 1800m and slept in Chhomrong at 2200m. As we are lower down again the landscape had shifted back into rice fields and villages – forests usually only remain above 2500m. The 5th day we crossed another river below 2000m, passed the Sinuwa and Bamboo teahouses before climbing up to Dovan at 2600m. Here we were starting to get a bit further from civilization – no more villages, just tea houses set up for the trekkers, and everything has to be carried on the back of a porter for days to get here. We saw porters carrying big metal kegs of gas on their back, or one skillfully navigating the narrow paths with a pack of 4 meter long planks. Food and everything else naturally cost more up here – a hot shower is extra and cost more than the accommodation (if the water is gas-heated, some places have solar-heated). A room is usually just 1-3 euro/night though, as long as you have all your meals in the same teahouse.

Rays of early morning light over the Chhomrong rice fields.

Edel crossing a bridge.

Day six we aimed to climb the final stretch up to the base camp, a 1.6km climb. We started at 6:30am with the first part of the walk passing through beautiful forests with views to the Annapurna and Machhapurchhe mountains in the distance as the valley closed in around us. On both sides were high steep forested mountain sides with waterfalls crashing down hundreds of meters. We had to cross a small glacier, and many tiny rickety looking bridges across little streams along the way. Past 3500m the landscape opened up completely, no more trees but plenty of wildflowers everywhere. We had lunch in the Machhapurchhe basecamp at 3700m before walking the final stretch to Annapurna basecamp – the landscape up here was even more barren..actually reminded a little of Connemara if it wasn’t for the 8000m mountains that jumped out of the clouds every now and then.

The Annapurna Sanctuary valley.

Wildflowers near basecamp.

We reached Annapurna basecamp after 8 hours of trekking – the last stretch felt quite long as we were tired and could see the camp in the distance but it never seemed to get closer. The final stretch crossed another glacier, quite flat and with lots of rocks and dirt on top so it wasn’t slippy, but we could hear the water gushing some meter below our feet and there were a few holes to watch out for. The basecamp sits right in the center of a circle of 6-8000 meter mountains, and the way we came in is the only route that doesn’t require climbing gear. The views are fantastic all around, mountains moving in and out of the clouds in the afternoon and evening and in the morning crystal clear views all around. We were up at sunrise to watch the views, after a night that wasn’t as cold as we’d feared at 4130m. Shower came in the form of a bucket of hot water for 2 dollars extra.

Cloudy evening view over the Annapurna range from basecamp.

Edel, Shiva and Deepak crossing a glacier.

Day seven we started the long walk down, reached the Bamboo teahouse after 8 hours just when the afternoon rains were starting. One of my knees were really killing me on the way down – down is much harder than up and takes a good toll on knees and feet. I adopted a walking stick for the first time, have always thought these are just an extra thing that you have to carry but this time I used one for support so much I got a blister in my hand. Edel was suffering a bit also, and we used our full supply of compeed to patch up her foot. When we were slow in the downhill sections our fantastic guide and porter, Shiva and Deepak, used the time to pick us fitsfulls of wild strawberries 😀 . At the Bamboo teahouse we got a small taste of what high-season must be like..in most of the places we stayed we were either alone or in nice company with just a couple other trekkers, but here a party of 12 arrived – mid-twenties teenagers who spent the whole night on drinking games, truth-or-dare, roaring, puking and throwing bottles around. Why bother going trekking if that’s all you want to do..instead of just going to sit on a nice beach in thailand where they could be with people who share their “interests”…? They’d arrived late in the afternoon, soaked in the rains that start every day around 2-4pm, probably after a late start due to hangovers from the day before…you create your own misery. I slept through most of it but they kept Edel and a nice Australian couple in the room next to us awake much of the night. We made sure not to be too quiet when we started before dawn the next day 🙂

View along the trek from Bamboo to Sinuwa.

Forest in the Annapurna Sanctuary.

From Bamboo we continued backtracking past Sinuwa and Chhomrong then turned off to a village called Jhinu near some hotsprings..good for trekking-tired legs. The long stone stairs climbing up to Chhomrong after crossing the river 500m below were pretty hard as it was nearing midday and quite hot. Oddly enough our legs were in better shape than the day before though – good to be climbing a bit again after all the downhill the day before. I went down to the hotsprings with Shiva in the afternoon after the rains – the leeches were out in force though and we had to stop and check our feet every two minutes but one or two still managed to get through. In the evening Edel and I tried the local trekker specialty in the restaurant; Mars-roll – deepfried in pastry like a spring-roll but with a Mars-bar inside! You only get away with this when you’re climbing a kilometer a day.. Eaten with custard. Otherwise we lived on more traditional Nepalese food during the trek, dahl-bhat which is a rice and dahl (lentils) with one or two small curried vegetable-dishes on the side. It’s also an all-you-can-eat so they come and top you up with whatever you need, great as you build up a good appetite walking and climbing all day. Shiva and Deepak had the dish twice a day and swear by “dahl bhat – 24 hour power!”, but we found it a bit too much for lunch if we’re continuing to trek in the afternoon. Another nice dish we found was Tibetan Gurung bread with honey for breakfast. And rösti with yak cheese in a nice Swiss-alps-meets-the-Himalaya combination.

Broken bridge near Landruk.

Plowing rice fields near Landruk.

Day 9 was eventful, we hiked down to cross a river at 1300m before climbing up towards the village Landruk – there were even more leeches here than on the way to the hotsprings. I counted 5 on my boot at the same time, all slowly making their way up. A few got through undetected, I found one mark uncomfortably high up on my leg when showering later in the evening.. And speaking of shower I got showered in mud when we passed a terraced rice field where some farmers we plowing with oxes – the beasts made a burst through the flooded field just as I passed on the field below and I got completely soaked. Pretty sure the farmers did it on purpose..anyhow they found it incredibly funny. When Edel passed by they threw mud into the water to try and splash her also..but they didn’t do anything when Shiva/Deepak passed. You don’t mess with the mountain man! Everyone else in the villages we passed before Landruk (where I could clean up a bit) also found it incredibly funny. I took some photos of the farmers when they were plowing after, figured they owed me that much.. 😀

Edel with some more friendly locals.

On the way up to Deorali at 2200m the landscape again changed to forest, and we got a proper soaking in the afternoon in the pre-monsoon rains. The monsoon is late this year, and we were probably lucky to have escaped the rains so far – only one morning left of the trek where we’d need to put the wet boots on. We trekked on to Pothana in the rain where we spent the last night and had our last mountain dahl bhat. Played cards with Shiva and Deepak in the evening celebrating our last day of the trek. We spent another three days back in Pokhara, enjoying the comforts of civilization again. It would have been too easy to stay longer at our cozy guesthouse, but as the resident western stoner (who otherwise seemed a nice person) explained us the beneficial medicinal properties of drinking cow urine as an ayurvedic treatment..we felt it was probably time to move and booked a bus to Chitwan national park.

[if anyone comes across this page googling for Nepal trekking here is the email address and website of a great guide in the Annapurna/Pokhara region: Shiva; sbishwokarma@gmail.com / http://www.shivatrekkingnepal.com/]

This turned out to be one of those posts where I moan and complain about things..I promise the next one will be about natural beauty and the kindness of others! 🙂

Before leaving Khajuraho for Varanasi I had to pop by the ATM, and I was stalked the whole way from the hotel there and back by one very persistent shop owner. We had seen him earlier in the day near the hotel, complaining to us that no-one wanted to look in his shop. I like shopping as much as the next guy at the best of times (it’s right between “being stuck in traffic” and “vomiting” on my list of favourite pastimes) but in India you get an offer for “you want see my shop” for every three steps that you take. And my interest in small tacky souvenirs has been on a downhill trend for years. Anyhow, he followed me the whole way there and back, at first trying to talk me into his shop and by the end he’d practically converted into being my private therapist, trying to cure me of my “denial” of wanting to buy hash from him. “I have 18 year experience in this, I can see on people what makes them happy, but I think you are hiding yourself…”. Usually it’s great to be everywhere in the off-season, though the touts-per-tourist ratio does of course go up when there are less tourists..

We left Khajuraho the next day, by jeep taxi to Satna to catch the Varanasi train. A nice Indian university professor we shared the train carriage with bought us chai in clay cups and gave us sandwiches. I was talking about what a great idea it was to use clay cups instead of the single-use plastic or paper cups that you see everyone throw out the windows on the trains here..until I realized that the clay cups are also only used once and people throw them out the window.

The Babua Pandey ghat in Varanasi.

Varanasi is the holiest of cities, one of the oldest living cities in the world and it’s been part of the Hindu religious tradition for 2500 years. It’s where people come to die, where people come to burn the dead – or if not burning them to tip them into the river. The holy Ganges floats here, and people come from all over to purify their body and soul by swimming in it…though the guidebook does warn that it’s neither the effluent, chemicals of body parts that will really get you if you do the same – it’s the heavy metals dumped by the factories upstream! Of course the first person you meet in the holiest of cities is going to be a bit of a douche – an aggressive tuktuk driver followed us the whole way from the train through all of the station and out on the streets – pausing a bit ahead of us and looking back waiting for another ambush every time we stopped or waited to watch a holy man get off the train and greet his followers. I believe it’s always better for you to find the taxi than the other way around (in Soviet Russia taxi takes you). We flagged a different tuktuk driver out on the street, but the stalker tout still tried to talk to him before we could set off – Edel cut that short. We had a hostel recommended by the guidebook picked out, “Vishnu Rest House”, though 4 copy-cats like “Vishnu Guest House”, “The Real Vishnu Rest House” etc. have popped up and pay commission for tuktuk drivers to bring people to them instead. This means you can’t actually tell the driver where you’re going..which complicates things. Edel had phoned the place in advance and they had recommended somewhere nearby we could ask to be dropped instead, without mentioning the name of the guesthouse and ending up at one of the fake ones… We did finally manage to get to the correct place, navigating the narrow labyrinthine alleys of Varanasi in the dark (power is cut more often than not here), walking the final stretch. The place turned out to be a bit rundown and dirty however, probably living off old glory, though the location was good overlooking the riverside ghats that Varanasi is famous for.

Narrow Varanasi alley.

We slept away most of the first day – it was too hot to do anything, though pretty miserable in the room also as the power to fire up the odd water/pump/hay/fan cooling contraption was missing for most of the day. I had a quick shower every 20 minutes just to keep from overheating. The second day we took a boat trip up and down the Ganges in the morning to see all the ghats – places along the river where people swim, pray, perform rituals, wash clothes, wash themselves, burn bodies. The boat driver, Lalo, was very nice and told us he was from the fisherman caste. There was no tourist-boat business back when the horrible discriminating caste system was designed, so the fisher-caste has now been expanded to include tourists. Apart from watching normal life go by (..and end) on the ghats we saw some of the reasons not to swim in the river float by; a goat’s head, another dead goat in a sack, a stray dog by the riverside eating a bloated cadaver of something (..hopefully not human). We went back once more on the river in the evening; Lalo took us to watch a puja, religious ceremony, performed on one of the ghats. Little children were running and jumping between all the boats, selling burning flower offerings for 10 rupees to give to the river.

Boat on the Ganges.

We stayed 4 nights in Varanasi, but only had one more adventure worth mention – the post office (I wanted to post backups of my photos and other things home). We had tried to find a small post office close to where we stayed first, but a shop owner had sent us in the wrong direction and refused to tell us the real location since we didn’t want to look in his shop.. We took a bicycle rickshaw to the GPO instead – I always feel a bit bad taking these as it’s usually a really old man sweating away at the pedals, but at the same time they’re some of the poorest people and do need the business. They’re also in general more honest than the motor tuktuk drivers and don’t quote five times the price or change the fare along the way. Out of guilt we usually pay double anyway though..the old man had to hop off and push the bike for some of the uphill parts in town. To post a parsel in the GPO you first need to go to a stall somewhere on the street outside of the post office, where someone will wrap it in an old cereal or similar cardboard box, then sew a cloth around it before finally sealing all the stitches with hot wax. A gentleman inside the office had guided us out on the street to find the right place and to find all the correct counters inside – turned out he wasn’t even actually working at the post office but was just helping us out (well, he did have a stall at a market nearby that he wanted us to look at, but we gave him a tip instead and he was happy). On the way back to the hostel with the bicycle rickshaw we saw a shop owner kicking a homeless cripple in the back on the road..looked like the poor man might had been trying to steal a packet of nuts.