After the hunger holiday Kristen and I took a long bus ride that got progressively hotter as we went. Fortunately I talked Kristen into getting a tourist bus and the ride was at least not as crowded. Plus, we ran into my rafting friend Nabin Gurung.
We arrived at Chitwan National Park, notorious for being the hottest most humid place in the country, at around 3 o'clock. Checked in, and for the first time since arrival in Nepal experienced the miracle of air-conditioning. We laid down and I immediately fell asleep only to be awakened 15 min later so that we could go for a walk to the government elephant facility. As Kristen was rousing me for the walk I just wanted to sleep and objected "What if I don wanna go pet the elephants?", my face still mashed on the pillow.
The walk turned out to be somewhat enjoyable, I got a new Facebook profile picture and lost a pound of water weight. That night there was a cultural show, complete with fight dancing, elaborate costumes, a fire twirler, and at the end silly white and Chinese people being forced on stage and attempting to dance the indigenous dances quite awkwardly. When the show was done we promptly retreated to our ohh so nice A/C room.
The next day was action packed, involving a lot of wildlife sighting and even more sweat. After a brief tutorial on how to run from a charging wild rhino, we boarded a dug out canoe for a river safari, followed a jungle walk. During the canoe ride, we spotted a few crocodiles and a rhino's rear end, reminding me of Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. The jungle walk, to our disappointment, did include running for our lives from dangerous wildlife, but rather running for our lives- Jumanji style- from giant flesh eating insects as well as battling heat stroke. Thankfully the next item on the agenda was the refreshing elephant bath in the river. Kristen could be heard for kilometers around as she wailed in delight as trunk after trunk was tossed and sprayed in our face, followed by a buck and tumble into the river. After a few rounds of this we tipped our mahout (elephant trainer) and returned once again to my favorite place in Chitwan... The air conditioned room.
The last activity of the second day was actually the high light of the trip. We went to ride the elephant. We had to climb some stairs and were loaded onto the beast's back with a Japanese couple. The ride was rough at first but we got used to it and learned to move with them. I thought it was cool riding an elephant in the first place but the advantages of doing jungle safaris on elephants became obvious about half an hour into the tour. We went on smaller and smaller paths with more and more branches threatening the well being of our faces when suddenly we came into a small clearing with a mud wallow in it. In the wallow was a mother rhinoceros and her baby. Normally a mother rhino would be nearly as dangerous as a mother bear, but we were on elephants and for some reason their presence did not threaten her. We were able to approach to just aside the small wallow, not 20 feet from the mom and baby. Pretty cool! Later we got nearly as close to another mother and calf on our way back. Double whammy!
One day remained and there was no schedule for us. Despite the steam cooker that was the outdoors, Kristen convinced me to leave our A/C sanctuary. We rented some rickety old bikes and went to a place called 20,000 Lakes. (Don't worry Minnesota. I highly doubt that there are nearly that many lakes in this entire country) apart from seeing a couple of monkeys and a soldier telling me I needed to put my shirt on the trip was not terribly eventful. In fact it would have been terribly relaxing if it were not for one thing, the seats. Somehow the memo about comfortable seating never got to Nepal. I have yet to find a seat that does not cause pain or make my but go numb, the bicycle seats being no exception.
The next morning we bid farewell to our pleasantly refrigerated room and again entered the world of public busses. Fortunately the return trip was not terribly uncomfortable and we made it bac to Besisahar in under 5 hours.
End vacation
Next up: Thor doesn't completely embarrass himself in a kayak. 
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