Water

Bad Manners

Kirk and I got a local bus from Sundurijal to Kathmandu at the end of our hike. Kirk was lucky enough to have a young lad "practice English" with him. The kid had some strong opinions, particularly on the offence caused to the Nepali people by foreigners who don't learn to speak Nepali and refuse to drink water out of the tap: "Nepalese water is fine, very clean. You are being rude by drinking bottled water instead of tap water."

We had just walked past a village with open sewers that flowed into small streams that then fed a small reservoir that supplied water to Kathmandu. This occurs everwhere, with all sewage flowing directly into water courses, which closes the loop very nicely for guardia. It would seem that a large portion of the population must have the disease; it is certainly very cheap to buy tinedazol, the drug for treating the disease.

Nepalese people do not travel well on buses. The tout has to run back and forward distributing plastic bags for people who are going to be ill, and you have to be careful that vomit from someone throwing up out a window at the front doesn't come back through your window toward the rear (speaking from experience). After taking a bus ride while recovering from a case of gardia and struggling to hold onto my lunch, Kirk and I came up with a new theory that upset stomachs might be behind much of the bus illness problems.

Getting Crook, Spotting Critters

All three of us got gardia around the same time. Kirk and I think we got it from water used to wash our cups and plates the appalling accomodation that we were forced to accept on the last night of our trek. We took the appropriate tablets in Kathmandu, then got a bus to Royal Chitwan National Park the next day. The bus ride got quite hairy towards the end, as the road followed the side of a river in a steep valley. There were many breakdowns, crashes and nutty drivers. One truck loaded up with bamboo had rolled over and was balanced on the cliff beside the road, with two shaken drivers sitting next to it.

No sooner had we made ourselves comfortable in the Tiger Safari Lodge (not to be confused with the inferior accomodation offered by the Safari Tiger Lodge and the Tiger Lodge), than Dave turned up on a noisy Royal Enfield motorbike (India's Harley Davidson). Dave is a loud, hilarious Enlishman (Torquay) who could talk the legs off a chair . We met on the Langtang walk and have bumped into him at each stop of our trip.

When you meet Dave drink. You don't have any option. We have bumped into him three times, and the consequences have always been both hilarious and terrible. Unluckily the timing of our beer and red wine session in Chitwan didn't agree with our stomachs, and Kirk and I spent an uncomfortable night being violently ill (Kirk had it worse).

The next day Jamie and I played with the elephants during washing time at the river. We would climb on the elephant who would stand up and try to throw us in the water, which it always managed to do in the end. That afternoon we went for an elephant ride on a magnificent big elephant with huge tusks. Chitwan has lots of animals, with the biggest drawcard being its population of 400-500 one-horned Asian rhinos.

We spotted lots of deer, and a hilarious monkey that threatened to make my day by almost falling out of it's tree (regular readers in the past will be aware that I don't like monkeys). Unfortunately footprints and dung piles were all that we saw of the rhinos.

The next day Kirk had recovered enough to join us for a half day hike and half day jeep safari in the park. It took us less than half an hour to find a rhino, which we had to view by climbing a tree. It is quite dangerous walking around with such large and unpredictable animals lurking in the long grass. Another walking group who had been in the same canoe as us got chased 80 metres by an angry male rhino, with one of their group lucky to be uninjured after the rhino threw him in the air.

We got a far better view of a rhino during out jeep safari, when a big male walked out onto the road about 10 metres behind our jeep. He had a good look at us, before deciding that we weren't worth the effort of chasing, and wandered off into the bush. Up close such animals look very large, and just a bit intimidating.

Lakeside Living

We are now in Pokhara, a town beside a peaceful lake with great views of the Annarpurna range. We got here a couple of days ago, though one of those days was a bit of a write off because we bumped into Dave and had to put the day towards nursing hangovers.

It is very close to the end of our time in Nepal. Jamie and I are going to take the long trip to the Indian border and onto Varanarsi tomorrow, and we just saw Kirk ride off on a rented motorbike. He is going to attempt to ride along the recently completed Annapurna road to the village of Muktinath where Julian and I once nearly got run out of town (see "This Town Isn't Big Enough" here).

I hope everyone back home is well. The next post will have details of the craziness and culture shock of India. As such it promises to be funnier and more entertaining than these pleasant Nepalese posts.