Chitwan!

Hello sports fans, I'm back. Sorry for my long absence, but our internet was being bitchy. Anyways, the weekend before last we did the funnest (and cheapest) thing we've done so far: visited Chitwan national park. If anyone out there is planning on travelling to Nepal, I highly recommend it. For a 3 day, 2 night stay in a nice place, all food, and all activities, it was 85 bucks each. Yepper, I love this country.

So Chitwan is a national jungle preserve, and houses pretty much all of Nepal's remaining wildlife, including endangered tigers (but those are pretty rare, and I was actually glad we didn't see any, cause: scary!). A rundown of our activities:

Day 1: Getting there
So everyone's aware of how Nepal's all mountainous, right? Good. This makes for some very twisty roads, and quite a few prayers to the god that is Gravol. Poor Rajiv hurled a couple of times, and Brian wasn't doing so good either. We made it in one piece, and in time to see a hilarious Nepali commercial shoot for cement that was filming at our hotel. We also got to see a Tharu (local ethnic group) cultural program, which involved yet another dude dressed as a peacock dancing around.

Day 2: Crazy amounts of activities
So our day started at an ungodly hour (all the better to catch wildlife) with a jungle safari on elephant back. This was super fun, until our elephants started throwing a tantrum, growling (I swear, elephants growl), pushing trees over, and running. If you've never been on a running elephant, let me tell you: it's both painful and scary.

Our elephant, pre-tantrum

But it did let us get up close to some wildlife, like these

white rhinos.

Then we got to go down to the river to participate in elephant baths! This is seriously one of the funnest things I have ever done you guys! You climb up onto the elephant (quite the feat), and then he sprays you with water from his trunk. Then he shakes you off. Then you climb back up. Repeat 5 or 6 times. Then, because Karen, Ronnie and I were pretty excited at the first water we'd seen in Nepal, we went swimming for awhile. And we tried to teach Rajiv and DC how to swim. Let me tell you, the sight of two men in their late 20's frantically dog-paddling like little kids in about 2 feet of water? Priceless. Then Karen got sick all night because it's hard not to swallow some river water when you're being hurled from an elephant's back, but even she agrees it was worth it.

Ronnie and I getting bathed, elephant-style.

That's some serious trunk-strength, right there.

Then (yes, this is still day 2), after lunch, we took a canoe-ride down the crocodile infested rivers while Brian screamed like a girl every time the canoe rocked 3 inches.

Front to back: Brian (freaking out), Karen, DC, random

Japanese girl, Ronnie, Me, Rajiv and Ram (our guide)

Marsh mugger: they actually do kill quite a few locals, so

maybe Brian was justified.

We followed up the canoe ride with a very hot and tiring jungle walk, where we saw a few giant deer and got bit by many mosquitoes. The walk ended at the elephant breeding center, which was awesome.

1 day old elephant baby omg!!!

After that day we were exhausted, as you can imagine. We went down to a river-side café and chilled out, and then fell into bed.

Day 3: Chilling and driving

The last day was spent wandering around the town and taking photographs. I managed to hold a puppy, a kitten, and a baby goat all in one morning. These incidents were in no way related, but it seems Chitwan is a baby animal paradise. Then we managed a puke-free ride back to Kathmandu. All in all, a freaking amazing time.