After the mountainous Pokhara it was on to hot Chitiwan National Park to see elephants and hopefully Asian PygmyRhinos!
We got to the park and it was hot. Damn hot. After lunch we had several hours to kill before a bush walk so I joined the little two in some pool time. There I met a guy from Montreal and a woman from Portland, Or – she is a specialist elephant vet! They have an NGO called Stand Up 4 Elephants https://www.su4e.org For the next few hours I found out about the plight of Nepali Elephants. They are often individually owned and the owners are poor and need to monetise their elephant. One way would be to sell it to India for hard labour in logging camps etc. Keeping the intelligent animal and suing it for tourism ensures a prolonged steam of income and a much easier life for the elephants. This NGO has start d ‘elephant happy hour’ where you just watch the elephant being an elephant…until that catches on, elephant riding and showers by elephant are the best way to keep these beauties in Nepal.
The younger two got showered by the elephant, and all but papa rode on the elephants and finally saw the rhino – yup – I missed out on that, but again, I minded the pool and the beer supply! The locals wanted to put 4 big people ( Kaia and I were the smallest by far) on the elephant and I just took a pass.
Other Wildlife
We had a few game walks thru the jungle and saw tons of birds, deer and crocodiles and heard a rhino playing in the water. We saw the Breeding Centre and some of the rescued elephants. We had an amazing ‘canoe’ trip down a river – kids were terrified of the many crocs….The guides were great game spotters and were mostly able to dodge the mainland tourists – they make so much noise, all the game is scared away. Overall I am quite ambivalent about this park – not nearly as developed as many African game parks but is developing. To our surprise all the hotels/lodges were in a run down town, not placed in the bush. When you visit the indigenous tribal folks it felt like you were in a human zoo. The standard of elephant care/feeding etc was pretty poor but hopefully Dr. Trish will help in that area.
