Chitwan National Park

It was another long scary drive to Chitwan National Park, which is home to tigers, elephants, rhinos, and the usual monkeys, crocodiles, peacocks, deer, pigs and lots of birds. With the Himalayas in the distance it's a beautiful place. The bus drops you off in the middle of farmland, where there are hoards of touts looking for customers for the many lodges. I had booked at the Lonely Planet's pick of cheap places, Jungle Adventure World, and was met by a friendly looking man who directed me to his open-backed jeep and we headed off into the distance with only a small pang from me. It turned out to be a very good place. I had my own little lodge and my next door neighbour was an elephant, which I loved. She worked all day and came home for dinner, then laid down and went to sleep for a few hours. I could hear her breathing heavily through the night.

There are a number of ways to see the wildlife and I opted for the longer trip into the Park by jeep, rather than the trip by elephant. It was a bumpy two hour drive deep into the jungle then back, stopping along the way to see lots of animals, but unfortunately no rhinos (or tigers). Everyone else I talked to had seen rhinos so it was my bad luck. We did see some impressively large crocodiles.

On Sunday, I was sitting in a cafe reading the Sunday paper, drinking coffee and eating banana pancakes when I noticed lots of elephants going past. I followed them and found they were heading for their daily bath in the river. It was lovely. The elephants completely submerge themselves and obviously enjoy it very much. Their mahouts (riders, who look after them for life) scrub them and people can sit on their backs and get squirted by the elephants. I chose to just feed one, but that was fun. They have very big tongues.

I did a lot of walking. It a beautiful, rural area and they were harvesting the mustard plants and hay. All the houses have mustard seeds drying on the ground, or kids belting the plants to get the seeds out. Most of the workers seemed to be women, often around my age, or perhaps they just looked that old. Most of the houses had livestock tied up or roaming around outside.

Everyone was very friendly and wanted to talk, particularly the children who loved having their photos taken. Not all of them had much English as they were not learning it at school, but they all had more English than I had Nepali.

People generally get around by bike and I hired one for a morning and biked out to the elephant breeding centre. The most challenging thing was overtaking elephants.

Twin bull calves had been born a few months ago. Elephants can sleep standing up, but it's nice to have somewhere to rest your trunk.

I woke up on my last day in Chitwan to the terrible news about the Christchurch earthquake, but fortunately through text messages and a call to Oliver, I was able to quickly find out that family and friends were OK.