Chitwan National Park

We couldn't turn down the chance to do an Nepalese safari to Chitwan National Park, so here we are. My first ever safari! We arrived on Monday afternoon to a surprisingly quiet village of Sauraha, just outside of the park. It's almost monsoon season, so there's very few tourists around, and the hotels and lodges are getting ready to close up shop for a few months. We chose a small budget resort that looks an awful lot like our thatched roof cabana in Tulum last March. There are palm trees everywhere, and the highest humidity that we've experienced yet. But the village is set along a river and is very compact, so we can easily walk around everywhere.

Our first morning here, we woke up at 5:30 am to pouring rain, so our first safari was cancelled. We enjoyed a sleep in instead, and then made it down to the river to watch the elephants bathe. This is quite the experience, because tourists are invited to sit on the backs of the elephants while the elephant trainers shout commands to the elephants. Commands like "spray the tourist with your trunk" or "roll over and dump the silly tourist into the river". Both Adrian and I joined in the fun, while Richard stayed on the sidelines playing photographer. We starteed out going together, but also rode the elephants on our own. Elephant skin is spiky and hairy, but surprisingly smooth. It's fun being thrown into the water, and then grabbing onto the ears to pull oneself back onto the elephant. Elephants also get scratched with brushes to keep them clean and feel better, but mostly this event is about getting the tourist wet.

In the afternoon, we made a safari into the park with a guide, first as sitters in a flat-bottomed row boat, and then as walkers. We saw many small animals like monkeys, a crocodile, deer, some large form of squirrel/rodent, and many. many birds, including a peacock and kingfishers, but not the elusive rhinos or tigers. The sounds and smells of the jungle were enchanting nonetheless.

This morning, we woke up at 5:30 to a overcast but dry day, so we started out on our elephant riding safari into a community forest buffer zone just outside of the actual park. We rode 3 of us in a basket sitting on top of an elephant, with the driver sitting just in front of us. Believe it or not, it was pretty comfortable, except for the frequent tail slaps on my toes. And this time we saw the rhinos, and very close up, only 2 metres away! Because wewere on an elephant's back and rhinos have poor eyesight, it was safe. The rhinos didn't ever try to move away from us as we got close to get photos. First we saw a daddy, mommy, and a baby rhino family, which is appropriate considering our little family of 3. They stayed mostly in the water, but we got very close to them. Next we came accross another rhino, and this time he got out of thewater so we could see how massie he was. Not quite as large as an elephant, but close. We also saw 10 deer, a monkey, and lots of birds again, especially beautiful blue ones. Pretty stunning!

We've got one more afternoon here, and we hope to visit the elephant breeding centre on bikes where there is a pair of baby twins, the first ever in captivity, and another baby only a few weeks old. And then we've been tourist long enough and we pack our bags and head to Pokhara to do some more trekking. It's been fun on this safari!!!

(I would try to upload some of my photos of this part of the trip, but the internet connection is pretty slow here and it doesn't seem to work. I may need to wait till I get home to add the photos.)

The Kathmandu Scene

In general, we've been really impressed with the places we've visited. Kathmandu, on the other hand, is a bit disappointing. I visited here 15 years ago when I was young and single, and thought it was one of the greatest places on earth. This time, it seems overly touristy, over priced, and not so interesting. The downtown Thamel part, that is. Plenty of Pashmina shawls to buy and tiger balm hawkers, but that's all. The first hotel we stayed at was so noisy and had mosquitos, not to mention the hardest bed and pllow of our trip. And there are no Tibetans here, and no Buddhist souvenirs. So we decided to make our purchases quickly and head out.

We spent the first day bargaining for a thanka, a Tibetan painting. Richard and I had decided to indulge ourselves in one thanka as our major purchase on this trip, and our only visa card purchase. After shopping around all day, we settled on a really high quality mandala painting designed by the Dali Lama. If you come to visit our home when we return, it should be in our living room as a daily reminder of this wonderful trip.

The next day was very unusual. There was a country-wide strike by the Maoists. The essentially demanded that all stores stay closed, and requested that there be no wheels on any roads. No bikes, no rickshaws, no cars, no motorbikes, nothing. So, what could we do? We walked, of course, to a temple only 3 kms out of the city, perched on a hill. We'd been planning to visit the Swayambunath Temple, but this seemed like the best day, with the city streets desserted of vehicles.

This is the classic Kathmandu temple with the 2 eyes and what looks like a nose but is really the Nepalese number 1 that look out at you from 4 sides. It's quite distict, and has a really nice vibe there. This temple is also known as the Monkey Temple, because of all the monkeys that live in the trees around the temple. Adrian fell in love with these critters, and we could barely pull him away at the end of the day. He loved watching their silly antics, and how they drank juice from garbage juice boxes, and teased each other. He especially loved the mommies and their little babies, who clung to the mommies for dear life as the mommies jumped around and dug through garbage looking for food. These weren't the scary monkeys of India, and these had seemed to have gotten used to the people around them, especially since many people feed them directly or simply leave them garbage.

At the end of the day, we decided to check out th Durbar Square, on a day when we didn't need to pay the hefty ($7.50 US for foreigners each) fee. What we didn't realize was that we also walked straight into the square where the Maoists were demonstrating. We tried to lay low, and did escape without notice, but there were huge crowds, all chanting and waving wooden batons around. They were harrassing anyone with wheels, but they left us alone.

We were happy to wake up today to a little noise and see that life was back to normal on the street and the strike was over. So we rented bikes for the day and our new friend, the thanka salesman, took us for a bike ride out of the city up to the top of a hill to view another new temple and monestary. It was the most stunning aray of Tibetan buildings we have seen yet. Beautiful colours and designs, all made by sculpting cement and then painting.

The ride back, however, was during rush hour, and I have never heard so many honking horns and seen such chaos. Even at busy intersections, they mostly operate like 4 way stops, only with bikes, cars, motorcycles, rickshawa, and pedestrians all competing for space. Adrian was a little freaked out, and it shows what a fantastic cyclist he is that he could even manage it. And without a helmet, of course. Richard got knocked once by a motocyclist a bit, but otherwise we managed unscathed. Quite the experience! I'll nver worry about Adrian navigating the Toronto bike lanes ever again.

Trekking in Nagarkot

After a few relaxing days in Bodhanath, we were ready for some mountain vistas. We hired a taxi to drive us up to a Nepalise weekend getaway. It's only 28 km from Kathmandu, but it's over 1000 metres higher (around 2100 m) and took 4 hours to drive. We did make a small detour to visit a particular temple en route, but Adrian calculated the drive to be about 7 km/hour. I have never seen a road in such terrible condition, even in India. There wasn't close to one lane that had solid pavement, and trafic was 2 way. The entire road was filled with rocks and potholes, and yet no one seems to complain. They are such a tolerant folk.

Upon arriving, we decided to splurge on a mid-range resort ($20 US) at the very top of the mountain. It was clearly quite a nice resort once, but hadn't had any maintenance in many years, and everything was dusty and crumbling. The view was stunning! We had clear skies at both sunsets and sunrises for 2 days, even though we had to get up at 5 am to see the sunrise. We could see the entire Himilayan mountain range on one side, including Everest in the distance, and the Kathmandu Valley on the other side. The Himalyans are snow-capped this time of year and appear very sureal, as they are so high in the sky we originally thought they were only clouds!

The first day we just daytrekked around the area. We did a 4 hour trek to Katikke and Sankhu, winding down through villages on walking trails. The terrain was very steep, and we walked lots of switchbacks.

When we returned to our hotel, they were filming a Nepalese music video. We got to watch the dancer part and hear the same Nepalese pop song repeated over and over. There's a real Asian esthetic about the pop music, very much like we heard in Burma, and same in Japan, but I can't say that I can fully appreciate it.

The last day, we woke up early and decided to walk back to Kathmandu. We started by walking to a watch tower in the middle of an army training camp. Adrian was a little freaked out to see a bunch of soldiers training in the middle of the road with guns slung over their shoulders and yelling orders and slugging bags of sand around for practice. He was more enamored with their obstacle course training.

After this, we just walked straight down, looking for lots of short cuts through farmers fields. By doing this, we met Raj, a 14 year old orphan, who offered to show us more shortcuts and guide us down into the valley. He was a great resource for us, since he knew all the locals, and they let us walk through their fields. He spoke great English and told us he learned it 1 hour a day at school, and that he really wanted to use it, but he lived too far away from more tourist areas to ever use it. We walked for 5 hours with him, not quite all the way back but he walked us to a local bus station and helped us take the city bus the final couple of kilometres. We would never have made it down the mountain so quickly, not found the right bus without him. We arrived back in Bodhanath with tired feet, but really it didn't take much more time than when we taxied it!

Tibetan Village of Bodhanath

After the long flight to get here, we were happy to settle into this tiny village of Bodhanath. We were recommended to come here instead of Thamel, the downtown centre of Kathmandu that is overly touristy. We love it here! Basically we've been seeking out the Tibetan centres of India and Nepal, and finding ourselves most at home there. Not that we're Tibetan, but Tibetans seem to bring some cleanliness and order to wherever they go, and for any of you who have spent any time in India or Nepal, you know that these country could use more cleanliness and order! The Tibetans set up guesthouses for reasonable rates (usually only $8 a night for the 3 of us, or $10 if Adrian is dying for a little tv time), great Tibetan restaurants with a little Italian food for the kids, and make sure everything stays safe, cleanand friendly. We love the "Hello" and "Tashi Delek" we hear shouted at us from every young kid.

We haven't done a lot here, except soak in the atmosphere and walk around the central stupa. Every night the entire community comes out to walk a kora (3 times around, in a clockwise direction) between work and dinner, between 6-7pm. We join in, and feel a part of it.

The Cyclone Detour

Our final 3 days in Yangon were spent soaking wet, with the winds and rain of Cyclone Aila pounding the city. Unfortunately, we couldn't do much around the city, although we did venture out one day with unbrellas for a tour of the down town during a brief interlude, only to be soaking wet in an hour anyway.

We left Yangon hoping for a break in the weather. Instead, we got a Cyclone detour, as Cyclone Aila decided to come in land and pound Kolkata, our next flight destination. What should have been a short 2 hour flight turned into a long10 ordeal. The flight left 3 hours late from Yangon, because the first plane was unflyable. Two hours into the flight, they announced an emergency landing in Chennai (Madras), in the south of India, and 4 hours away. From there they made us wait in the airplane until 11:30 pm. Even then, the pilot announced that we would leave and "maybe" we would be able to land in Kolkata, and "maybe" we would have to turn around again. He didn't instill much confidence! The only food they provided us with was yucky-tasting peanuts, dry crackers, and mini-bottled waters. Finally at midnight, we got dinner.

Unfortunately, by the time we landed in Kolkata, it was 1:30 am, and our pre-booked hotel had already given our room away. Everyone was stranded in Kolkata. We walked past many trees that had been downed from the cyclone, but it was no longer raining. We woke up 4 night watchmen, but everything was full, so we wandered back to the airport and slept there. I found a special room for "ladies", and Adrian and I slept on benches there, away from the glare and noise outside. Unfortunately, Richard didn't catch a wink that night.

The next day, our next plane was delayed again, but finally we flew at 2:30 pm. By 4pm, we were finally in Nepal. Yippee!

Fun in Nyaungschwe

After fighting the heat in the south, we were happy to take an easy 45 minute flight to the cool temperatures of Nyaungschwe. It's in the north of Burma, and the trees and low mountains make it much cooler this time of year. This is almost the rainy season, so there are few guests, and we almost had our run of the town. We loved how easy it was to get around in this small village, which has almost no personal cars, only pedestrians, motorcycles, taxis, and horse carts.

This area is set up for active folks like us on a budget. We spent the first day cruising around Inle Lake in a (loud!) motorized boat with a friendly guide. He showed us local fishermen catching fish with nets and spears, women weaving textiles from lotus flower stems, and traditional silversmiths. We felt like royalty riding in this long boat sitting in adirondack chairs with our umbrellas to shade the sun. I could have ridden all day, and in fact we did!

The next day, we took a 2 day trek into the local Pa-O hill tribe with a wonderful guide who spoke great English. He used to be a forester, so he could answer all our questions about the trees and rocks and animals. He also showed us how the local men concrete out of the local limestone rocks. We trekked 23 km the first day, and got to take in a hill festival of 7 villages complete with drumming, dancing, and drinking rum in the middle of the day. We ate our meals (made by the guide) in local village houses. We spent the night on mats in a village house under mosquito nets. Adrian played with the kids' animals (baby kittens, dogs, goats). The next day we only had to hike 12 km down to get back down to the village.

Our final day there we had our guide organize a motorcylce ride (each of us riding on the back of 3 motorcylces) to a local hot spring for bathing with other villages. We then got a private tour at the only winery in Burma. The vintner spoke good English and enjoyed opening up about 9 of his wines to us to try. He's trying to promote wine drinking in Burma, but really it's a beer or rum culture. For the afternoon, we did a horse trek up to some caves. Adrian really like horse riding, except when the horse nipped at his toes, or leaned too far forward coming down the mountain.

Every night we ate dinner at a different restraurant, and each night, we were the only ones there. Too bad, because we had beautiful weather and really liked the villagers. They say tourism was just taking off 3 years ago when the the protests began, and then last year they had Cyclone Nargis, so tourism is really slow.

If anyone reading this is interested in a unique holiday, maybe something similar to what they used to think Thailand was, Burma is the place to visit. We love it!!!

Mon State Celebreties

We arrived on May 11 into Yangon, exhausted, but happy to be there. We spent a day relaxing and checking in with our friends at the Dot Pon Zon Monestery whom we had met in 2002. We got to spend time with the Sayadaw there, who is 97 years old and doing well for his age. He used to travel lots, and now he's bedridden, but generally healthy and fun to speak with through a translator.



The monestery arranged for us to visit the native village of the Sayadaw, Krokpi, in Mon State. We were escorted by 3 monks on the over night aircon bus, and given snacks along the way to go with the blaringly loud and obnoxious Burmese comedys and sitcoms that ran on the dvd player all through the night. We got to stay in the monestery down there on mats and covered with mosquito nets. A group of monestery ladies cooked 3 meals a day for us. Adrian especially loved the way they hovered over us as they fed us fantastic spreads of local seafood, local fresh fruits (mangostein, jack fruit, rambutan, mango, pineapple), vegetables, and sweets, including fanning us with hand fans to keep the flies away as we ate. They also figured out Adrian's picky eating habits and prepared special foods for just him, like fried chicken, potatoes, rice, and french toast. They truly made us feel like kings and queens! And all for free, or course. We made a donation to the monestery when we left, but they really can teach us a lot about generousity.


We spent 3 days with them, and each day, the Sayadaw had arranged for "field trips" involving us and 2 full pickups of local persons. Once day we visited his "tower", a massive metal structure at the top of the highest point in the village, that you can climb and get a great view. It reminded Adrian of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, but not as high. All buildings in Mon are made of concrete or wood, so this metal structure was clearly influenced by the Sayadaw's western travels. Another day we visited an ancient monestery nearby to see Richard's old friend, U Agi, the builder of pagodas that Richard travelled with in 2000 (Winnipeg, Edmonton, and South Africa). On the last day, we went to the Burmese seaside. Richard and Adrian swam in the waves, while everyone else looked on. Burmese people rarely swim. They don't seem to know the idea of a fresh water swimming pool, and are intimidated by the salty waves of the rocky Sea of Bengal that is their coast.

Burmese people in general are super friendly and generous, but when you have friends of friends, they really go over board. We met so many people around the town. One man who had spent time in an Indian Boarding school as a child became our unofficial translator for 3 days and followed us everywhere. When I got 5 spider bites during my first night, I visited the local doctor's clinic (the doctor's wife is one of the cooking ladies) and was treated with antibiotics and a dressing, free of charge, of course. We also met a school teacher who invited us to her classroom. We talked about Canada and tried to get them to ask us questions about Canada, but mostly they were too shy. Its not their custom to ask questions, especially not in English. All the girls had huge crushes on Adrian, poor boy, and giggled around him lots. He's only 11 years old and not interested in girls yet, but he looks like he's 16 to them, and taller than most of their fathers already.

It was a bit exhausting to be such celebreties, and to have people around us non-stop, but it was also exactly what we were looking for- a real slice of Burma. We didn't talk about politics at all, but we did get to make a real heart connection with these people. When we left, they loaded us up with cigars, necklaces, and mon longyi (wrap around skirts for men and women). I already miss that fantastic food!

Playing Catch Up

Did I fall off the planet somewhere near Dharamsala? Well, not exactly, but close. Two stories, one at a time.

First, we were in Dharamsala having a wonderful time hanging out in this funky little Tibetan town. We spent a few relaxed days at the Sherabling Monestery nearby with our friend Michael, the uber-relaxed yogi friend from Canada who's been staying in India off and on for 20 years. We got to see the ancient Padmasambava caves and a beautiful lake. We were enjoying eating mutton momos (dumplings), and I even took a cooking course to learn to make them at home. On Saturday we got to meet both the 17th Karmapa and the Dalai Lama in the same day. All was well, until we realized we'd somehow "lost" a day in our planning, and were supposed to be at the airport in Delhi on Sunday, not Monday, to fly to Kolkata in order to be ready for the once-a-week only Monday flight to Burma. Oops! Without blaming each other too much, we quickly bought new airplane tickets to Kolkata, tore up our overnight train tickets, and booked a 12 hr taxiride (in a luxury SUV, no less) to Delhi. We call it the $500 mistake, and have decided to assign Adrian the task of keeping us informed of days of the week. He's doing a much better job! Believe it or not, it did all come together and we made our flight to Yangon on Monday May 11 as planned. I planned to write about Dharamsala on Sunday, but instead I was too busy panicking.

Secondly, when we arrived in Yangon finally, we discovered that not only Facebook, but also all social networking sites are denied access, including Adrian's and my blogs. So no way to catch up. We were able to hack in to Facebook a couple of times during our 2 weeks in Burma, thanks to creative techies there, but they weren't able to get us into the blogs. So here I am playing catch up. Be patient as I try to squeeze in the time now that I'm in Kathmandu.

Dharamsala

Our Sleeping Berth