Chitwan National Park, Nepal

Had 4 days in Chitwan National Park where I:-

- Got a ride on the back of our guest house owner's (Ganesh's) motorbike
- Saw many a buuuutiful sunset over the river

Chitwan.. Yeeeah i'm gonna get good at sunset pics =)

- Went to a Tharu culture evening, where the Tharu people performed dances with sticks to drums and they had some other crazy dances in crazy costumes (e.g. giant peacock!). After they danced they invited people on the stage to dance round in a circle so I got dragged up by Ganesh, and so promptly grabbed Hannahs hand to drag her and Becks up too! Was such a good laugh..

Safari....on an elephant...

- Conquered the jungle by getting a canoe ride down the river (with 2 of the guys from our guest house as guides) and walked for 3 hours back through the shrubs, trees etc. Got rather scratched as we had to fight our way through the bushes, but was totally worth it to be with relatively unspoilt nature! All I actually saw was a croc in the river, lots of birds and millions of red cotton bugs and leeches (ewww)..oh, and monkeys but they are everywhere anyway! Later that same day, we did the elephant safari where we saw loads more (mongoose, dear and rhinos!). Gutted bout the lack of tiger spotting, but it's rare people see them now.
- Spent an evening round a bbq learning Nepal songs from some pissed locals who work as guides for jungle trips..they like their rum!
- Bathed the elephants in the river! (Becks has the photos. Her blog is www.statravelblogs.com/beckybouk). Basically scrub them with a rough Stone as hard as poss and they love it! Also I sat on her back afterwards and got splashed with water from her trunk, then dunked in =) Another sureal moment being so close to an elephant, it was defo one of my fave moments
- Went to see the baby elephants at the breeding centre. Not sure what I really feel about the whole thing actually cause they get tied up for parts of the day, hit with sticks when they try to escape, and breeding elephants purely to train them for safari...hmmmm...

Chitwan National Park, Nepal

Bharatpur, Nepal