10-11-19 - Chitwan National Park - the elusive Bengal tiger
/Day 117. Kyle & Leanne joint blog.
Today we awake to a great breakfast buffet of French toast, milkshakes, chula and Bhutara. Leanne exclaims that she’s never been so excited over a chickpea dish but her true love is chula back in Kathmandu.
Kyle breaks the news to Leanne that we are going to ride an elephant this morning. That’s all he shared perhaps knowing her propensity to quickly spew “that’s ok, I will just wait for you here” right at the exact moment she is supposed to board (think Sydney’s Blue Mountains steep train). Leanne, who tends to be scared of heights, takes one look at the 15 foot high Asian Elephant with a 4 person seating crate tied by two thin ropes about the Elephant, and says, “un-no, no way, nope, not happening.” Yes, the Blue Mountain train is happening all over again as it unfolds before our very eyes.
“Mom, you have to do it!” the kids are cajoling her. “If I don’t like it, you’ll take me right back, right?” she asks the Elephant driver. “Yes mam, of course,” he replies but Kyle sees a look in his eyes that says once the Elephant has left the barn, there’s no getting that thing back.
We all manage to get on without plunging 15 feet to the Elephant afterlife and Leanne is figuring maybe she’s on here 10 minutes tops as the line is long and there’s plenty of others behind her. We will just be circling this little clearing, right? Leanne’s face is pure shock as the elephant starts trampling over bushes and plunges headlong into the jungle trees. “What’s he doooiiiing?” Leanne wails. “What do you mean, it’s a two hour elephant safari, he’s going into the jungle,” Kyle responds. “You didn’t tell me it was two hours, I thought it was five minutes in the parking lot and we’re done!” Hmmm…seems Kyle conveniently “forget” to mention the two hour in the jungle part. But then again, would Leanne have gotten on the elephant if she knew that beforehand.
Our group is on two elephants along with about six other elephants with other groups. The kid’s elephant quickly gets separated from us in an elephant traffic jam and are gone into the jungle. The elephant plods along in the jungle with trees snapping back at us as we duck and shuck and jive atop the elephant. We come to a clearing and see two deer and herd of wild boar roaming about. We pass by a river with two rhino’s bathing in it. So cool. The two hours passes by in a flash and Leanne proclaims how glad she is that she didn’t back out of the ride. Afterwards, we feed our elephants bananas and pose for pictures. Another item added to the adventure list.
Back to the hotel where Leanne and Kyle enjoy a late morning swim. After another great lunch of chicken Marsala, dal, rice, panteer and naan, we head back into town to for our Jeep driving safari in the park. It takes a while to secure our Jeep amongst the crowd but fortunately Sanjay our fearless safari guide is totally on it. After about 30 minutes, we walk down to the river where we are to take a long wooden canoe across the river. Sanjay points about 10 meters up the river and says, “see the crocodile staring out from the water?” Ummm…yes, we see it so are you sure about this canoe ride thing? Leanne suggests that we’ve seen quite a few animals and maybe we don’t need the jeep safari after all. Sanjay insists we will not become crocodile tourist bait and we do make it across the river under the intense staring watch of the crocodile.
We hike over a sandy beach and arrive at our Jeep. It has been converted so that nine seats sit on top of an open air platform and we pile on into the seats. Kyle has been asking every jungle staff person we come into contact with if we’ll see a tiger. Our expectations have been tempered as there are only 120 tigers in the huge park which is 932 square kilometers and the tigers are nocturnal so it is very rare for them to be out during the daytime. Yes, the Bengal tiger is an extremely endangered species.
We are just settling in while Sanjay starts telling us about the history of Chitwan when he eyes pop open bigger than flying saucers, his month falls agape and his finger shoots out pointing up the road. Yup, sure enough, there is a Bengal tiger about 15 meters up the road as we come around a bend. We all look up and upon hearing the jeep approaching sprints about 10 meters along the road and turns and darts into the bushes and trees. We approach and stop at the spot where the tiger entered. Kyle is begging, pleading and imploring Sanjay to take him into the bushes to track the tiger. Clearly that boy left his common sense back at the higher elevations of Tibet.
We are patting ourselves on the back for our good fortune and Sanjay is quick to take the credit. “You saw tiger because you have extremely lucky guide with you,” he jokes. Kyle gets the unspoken message that extremely lucky tiger guides deserve extremely big tips.
Having seen the rare Bengal tiger 10 mins into the drive, we could have called it a day and headed home happy. Over the next four hours we sort of lose our beginners luck as we only see a couple of elephants which do not elicit the same reaction having now ridden one. Our guide is feeling like he needs to say something so he starts pointing out termite mounds. Yes, we go from tiger euphoria to animal drought to termite mounds that quickly.
In the end, our luck turns back and we see monkeys, wild elephants, crocodiles, deer and several birds. We also stop by a conservation and breeding center for the crocodile and turtles. We see dozens of baby crocs, adolescent crocs and a few older ones that look like they want to nimble on Americans.
We head back towards the river and catch the orange fireball sunset falling down behind the forest and the 12 feet high elephant grass. Everyone is smiling, standing up, and generally incredibly exhilarated by this experience. It’s the kids first real safari although they mentioned something about taking a Jeep to see the buffalos on Catalina Island. However, we count today as their first taste of safari!
It’s such a bumpy ride that the elephant and Jeep have tricked our Apple Health app into thinking we actually walked the 10 miles or 22,000 steps it is displaying (of which we probably only accomplished maybe 1,000).
As we head back, Jeep to sand dune to canoe to bus to hotel, we see the elephants from our morning safari on their commute home — in the middle of the same street we are on. The locals seem completely unphased by a half dozen elephants strolling gracefully in rush hour traffic. But still it’s quite the scene to experience. Sun is setting and Leanne ponders whether elephants can get a traffic ticket and how unsafe it must be since they don’t have headlights for the dark.
We head back to our hotel. It’s hopping - there’s something going on here. DJ Music Nepalese style is blasting in the garden in front of our rooms and I think we are in for another night of thumping music - 3rd in the last week.
At dinner, Kyle is re-telling the story of how we not only saw a Bengal tiger but also how he stared the tiger down until it retreated into the bushes to an enraptured hotel staff. It was full-on Crocodile Kyle Dundee come to life Nepalese style. The staff re-iterate how lucky we as there are a thousand tourists who go out a day and the last tiger sighting before us was eight days ago.
We retire to our rooms at 8 pm. Leanne and Ashley draw while Kyle zonks out and dreams of his second career as a fearless animal safari guide tracking down wild, rare, ferocious man-eating animals.
