Photos of our Fabulous Adventure
Wake up call for 6:00am and down at the river by 6:30am for our jeep Safari. Gobinda and Jitu, our naturalist guides, help us in to the boat to cross the short distance to Chitwan National Park. The air was foggy and cool and gave a mysterious feel to the day.
As we were docking on the opposite bank, Jitu pointed to two large footprints that belong to a Rhino that was drinking water from the river. We saw several other fresh tracks and dung so it hadn’t been too long ago. Not far away we also saw huge elephant tracks.
We climbed into two jeeps and started our journey through the jungle. The jungle here consists of Sal forest with deciduous trees, riverine which looks a little more lush and jungle like, and grasslands with grasses that can be as tall as 15 feet. The elephants love this grass, hence the name they give it is Elephant Grass. Similarly, the Rhino Apple tree is a fruit tree that the Rhino’s love.
Gobinda, the guide in our jeep, was very good at spotting many varieties of birds – over 500 species in this park alone! The roads in the park were actually in better shape than the highways so it was a comfortable ride, with the exception of a couple of Interesting spots – one of which we got stuck in the sand.
About an hour into the park we saw countless Spotted Deer, and a wild boar. We made several pond and river stops but no Rhino out yet – it is still a little cool for them, they will come out later in the day when the sun burns the fog off. One of the stops is our picnic breakfast stop. The guides and drivers set up a table and voila, within 10 minutes we have a delightful buffet breakfast, including brewed coffee. What a treat!
Breakfast completed we continue on our journey through the forest. Hooray, we see Terai grey Langur monkeys, the ‘forest entertainers’. They are jumping from branch to branch and teasing us – they certainly live by their name!!
We decide to make the trek back to the lodge via a slightly different route. The guides are hoping we can cross a shallow area of the river and possibly spot a Rhino. We cross a narrow creek bed and literally we were a foot off the seat – almost like a roller coaster. At the rivers edge the decision was made not to cross the river, thankfully. The guides and drivers were quite excited though as the spotted fresh tiger tracks. So fresh that the tracks were still wet from his visit to the river.
Excitement over, we backed up off trail to turn around and got stuck in the soft sand. It took some manoeuvring but we finally managed to face the other direction. These situations always bring a lot of discussion and some confusion from the locals – hilarious to watch. We were managing ok, however we could hear the other jeep getting stuck as well. Our driver and Gobinda went back to help. His parting words were, ‘if the tiger comes, make sure you take a photo’ – ha ha, very funny! Finally we are both unstuck and heading in the right direction (thanks to Shane’s help showing them out to get out of the soft sand – very much like snow).
Shortly afterwards we arrive safe and sound at the lodge and have some time to relax. We all disperse in several directions and at 3:15pm, seven of the group are off on elephant safari. I chose to chillax in my room and get caught up on photos and writing, Pam & Val opt for a massage.
We reconvene around 7pm for drinks and a presentation on Chitwan National Park. Dinner was delightful as always and we all turned in around 9:30pm