Xmas at Chitwan

I had a lovely Xmas holiday Chitwan for 4 nights with Ellen and Vishniya two other VSO vols - we stayed at a lovely lodge - Sapana (dream) lodge near the edge of the park by a river. It had lovely grounds a lovely decking for lounging around on cushions, an outside fire pit for the evening, traddional flower covered buildings and it was a community focussed project supporting school and health projects in the local village. It was also warmer than KTM blue skies and T shirts in the day and a flease at night . Xmas eve dinner we spent a pleasant evening with 3 girls - (well early 30s) - from Sri lanka - who were together for a re-union - we'd met them on the bus! On Christmas morning we got up early for a kayak trip and jungle walk and saw dear, birds - storks, kingfishers to name a few and monkeys, in the jungle we saw tiger footprints but no tigers, many more birds, including exotic looking rocket tailed drongos and termite mounds. We finished our trip at the elephant breeding centre - most elephants in nepal are working ones and as there arent many left in the wild they have to breed their own. One Mum had tiny baby twins - you could get quite close to some of the bigger babies and they poked you with theur trunks! Back at the lodge we had two elephants waiting for us - one thing elephants like to do (or so we are told!) is have a bath - so ihopped on the back of one and rode it down to the river for bath time - and it sprayed me lots with its trunk! I'll put the photos on my website soon for you to see. We then wondered into town for xmas lunch and then had an evening round the fire. The next morning I went for an early morning elephant safari in the chitwan jungle - saw many more birds incluidng peacocks sitting up in trees and a few dear close up - and in the afternoon it was off to the annual international elephant races. The elephants are painted and come to a big gathering - I saw all the elephants arrive and went and fed them all bananas - they take them from your hand with the tip of their trunks - they are so sweet and gentle - but as with everything nepali - it started late and all the 'big official people' had to make their speeches first - so I never saw any races - probably a good thing as I think sometimes a few of the handlers may have been a bit heavy handed with the Ellies. The last day we did another canoe trip down a bigger river - as we loved it so much the first time - and this time saw rhino and gharawhal a rare long nosed fish eating croc along with a whole host of birds -ibex, darters and giant ajutant storks at one stage we didnt know where to look we had so much choice!

Our final afternoon we took an oxcart to look at a tradditional Tharu (local tribal group) village - it was the right pace to travel at down there- as it was so slow and relaxing. We travelled back in the dusk through mustard fields - all in all a really great trip!