Royal Chitwan Nation Park

Safari Adventure Lodge

The most atmospheric way to visit Chitwan is to stay at one of the upmarket resorts inside the park. However, those resorts are quite expensive. So our tour agent recommended us to a lodge just outside the park, with the same safari atmosphere but more reasonable price.

One day when I walked around the lodge, waiting for lunch, I found many beehives hanging on the lodge’s walls. From the balcony of our room, you can see one of them, a little bit scary though

There are not much facilities in Royal Chitwan compared to other places. Electricity supply is only available at daytime normally (however, lack of electricity happens everywhere in Nepal). Each group will be given a specific tour guide who will follow you through all the activities during the time you are there. Our tour guide was a very nice, sincere guy named Mai La, which is a little funny as it means Shouting Guy in Vietnamese :D.

As there are not many people in the lodge, it was like a home-stay for us, which is really interesting and relaxing. The life here is peaceful and simple, untouched by modern civilization. Well, no Internet, no TVs, even no telephone … Everyday, there was a Calling-Man come up to our room exactly at 7AM – 12PM – 7PM to call us down for meals. How about wake-up call? You can order at reception and at that time, there will be someone to knock the door and call you up :D

Meals were provided in a common dining hall to all of the guests at fixed times and with fixed menu, if you miss it, you hardly can find any other restaurant within 2km L And our activities were scheduled well enough to be back to lodge just right before the meal times. Sounds like in the army huh? But man, I did enjoy it ..

Tharu Village

Safari adventure lodge is surrounded by small Tharu villages that provide a glimpse of life on the Terai plains. Tharus are the tribes of chitwan who live near the jungle and wildlife for centuries. Their houses are made of mud and dung plastered over wood and reed frames. Farming is the main industry and many people still decorate their houses with Mithila paintings and adobe bas-reliefs of animals. The lifestyle here is idyllic. Beautiful sunshine, golden fields, people chillin in the sunshine. Old women cutting up Turmeric tubers to dry in the sunshine before grinding into powder.... Young girls weaving the matting for carpoys, which are a kind of raised bed or resting platform. Various grasses and raffias are used. In summary, the life here is similar to any agricultural provinces of Vietnam, which saved time and energy for Mai La to show and explain things to me.

Even those views are not strange to me at all. I still like it very much, it gave a city girl like me the chance to recall my childhood. I went into one family's hut to look around. Really cosy with sleeping areas for everyone, kitchen, storage areas. The lady of the house gave me a large cup of Roxy, the local potent brew I mentioned. Whoosh... quite nice! Smells nice and tastes pleasant too.

The only surprise for me is the place called “Cultural Museum”. Whenever I go to a new city, I will spend my time on the museums, which can give me a general knowledge and the feel of the place I visit. However, this is the least-look-like museum that I’ve ever been to.

According to what Mai La told us, the life here was not as peaceful as it looked like. Before, when they haven’t put the electric fence around the jungle, every night wild animals could come to the village, destroy the fields, hurt or take people to the jungles. Everyday when we walked back to the lodge from the jungle, we could see many rhinos, crocodiles wandering just over the fence, next to the village. They can be such a danger without the fence.

There was Tharu cultural dance in the garden of our lodge on the first evening. Guys (no women perform dances here) dressed in white, waving and clashing sticks to a drum beat. A number of dances were performed starting with the stick dance. One was the peacock dance...the peacock was introduced here to reduce the number of snakes that used to trouble the villages. They are no longer a problem as peacocks are everywhere. To finish off the show, a form of conga on stage for the audience, me included to join in. A bit of fun jumping around without much of a clue who to follow. Quite fun.

The most impressive memory to me was the sun set view from the bank of Rapti River. However, my camera was out of bateria so I couldn’t record that moment. To make up for that, we had to wake up very early on the last day to catch up the beautiful sun rise.

Now you can see how much we enjoy the fresh morning air and such a beautiful view.

Elefant safari

Totally fearless of any other animals, the elephants are the traditional means exploring the jungle and wildlife known as the Lord of the jungle, they are the best means to watch tiger, rhino, deer, sloth bear and other wildlife. Elephants move with a heavy, rolling gait and 4 passengers are crammed into each wooden howdah (riding platform). Each elephant is contrilled by a Mahout sitting behind the elephant's head, who works with the same elephant throughout its life. It not that easy to climb up to your seat though, as my elephant is a female one and she loves to swing :P

Riding an elephant is thrilling rather than comfortable. We have travelled through open grassland and dense forest, enjoyed the life of the jungle and approached closely but safely to some of rare animals like single-homed rhinos, several species of deers, marsh mugger, peacock …Totally, the safari was great fun.

Not only took an elephant ride, we also visited the elephant breeding centre, where the elephants are used for breeding and then trained for work use, but not returned to the wild, which I think is sad. We had the chance to see cute baby elephants, and see mahouts preparing kuchiis – the elephant sweets made from molasses and rice wrapped in grass.

And the most interesting information of elephant that I found out is this

Canoeing

A float down to river by dugout canoe is amazing. You can never feel better floating in a tranquil river with clear water so that you can even see the bottom of the river and watching birds and wildlife species that frequently come to drink water and bath.

To a deeper section of the river, we started to see more and more holes on the side of the river banks, in different sizes.

My tourguide explained to me those are crocodiles’ caves. OMG. Most of the caves were empty, where were all of them? Well, they must be hunting in the river I was floating on, except for baby crocodiles or some lazy ones busy sleeping like this …

Might think that it was not thrill enough, Mai La showed us a large group of water bubbles right next to our canoe and told us that was a crocodile. Thanks, Mai La. It was lucky enough that we didn’t put out hands down there to try the cool water, which we normally did when doing boating in Vietnam. The feeling of having a crocodile swimming next to you is not that bad…

Mai La also explained to us that the crocodiles here seldom attack tourists, they do only on breeding season when they think that you may be a danger for their babies or eggs. And he once had a female Taiwanese tourist who was said hi by a crocodile, totally terified and cried for the whole 3 days after the event :P

Though it’s a little bit scary. I have to admit that I love canoeing and will not hesitant to try it again if I have chance. Well, but should not on breeding season huh.

Jungle walk

On the second day, after breakfast, we set off for a 3 1/2 hour walk through the jungle. Mai La was armed only with a big stick and we only brought along our mineral water bottle. The jungle views was so wonderful that walking was just the minor task as our main one is taking pictures

Then we took a break at the watch-tower inside the forest

Mai La told us from the beginning that as we were only 2 tiny girls, he would took us through safety zone only, which was more the outside of the jungle. We were able to see birds, wild boars, some kinds of deers, rhinos .. along our way but so far it seemed much like a relaxing walk. So when given the choice of an easy way along the river or a harder way through the jungle to get back to our lodge, we chose the second one. And while we went a little inside the jungle, we heard a big roar and Mai La seemed to be so cautious, stopped us from moving. Answering to my questioned eyes, he simply said “tiger”. I had read about attacks on people by tigers/leopards, and there was only Mai La and the 2 of us here so it was scary considering he only had stick again! However, we managed to controlled our fear and followed strictly whatever Mai La told us to do. We slowly and quietly moved out of the area until he told us that we were back to the safety zone.

From what I understood from his explaination. Tiger won’t attack tourists unless they enter its area or seem to be able to harm their babies. In such case, they roar to warn the human first, if the people recognize the signal, they just move out of the area to be safe. If they don’t, then after 3 times of warning, the tiger will attack them.

By the end, even though the safety side of things was a bit nerving, the personal service was superb here and I was all happy with the time we were here and the fact that we had more knowledge of the jungle shared by the naturalists. It’s truly an experience of a lifetime.

For more pictures, click here