Jungle Camping in Nepal

Sounds exotic doesn't it? Well it was! Our friend near Bardia National Park took us camping in the conservation area outside the park. We packed up a couple of mules, and these were no ordinary mules. They made a solo trek with a man named Dan from Lhasa across Tibet and into India and ended up living at Mr B's. This was an experiment in taking them camping to carry gear. We went by motorbike and met them near the camp site. We went into the jungle looking for one horned rhinos and it was an adrenaline raising experience. They are quite dangerous and will charge you and can kill you easily! We only got a glimpse of one and spent more time running from them than anything.

I have to interrupt myself to tell you that we are now in the mountains and its a torrential rain and hail storm. Really dramatic!

Back to camping...We picked out our site just at dusk and the boys started cooking. We set the mules up just as the moon starting rising over the river where we could see crocodiles lazing on the bank. Mr B is a competent guide here and knows the jungle and he heard warning and distress calls from the wild deer. It turns out we were in a female tiger's territory and they were warning she was near. The mules kept up a constant alert with ears perked and nostrils flaring.

We had a wonderful camp meal and then tucked in for the night. Mr B and the boys took turns keeping watch over night for both the tiger and wild elephants. Our tent was pitched next to the river bank for quick exit over the bank if we got a visit from the wild things! After a little star gazing and moon watching we turned in and lay in the tent listening to tribal drums from a distant village celebrating a festival.

I was surprised to get a a good nights sleep under the circumstances but I did. The next morning we found tiger prints about 150 feet from camp. She paced back and forth and decided not to visit! There were fresh elephant prints nearby too. After a hasty cup of tea we were off rhino hunting again. Mr B was determined we see one and get a picture but after lots of trucking around and running from them we were only rewarded with another glimpse. The irony is that one day we went into the park to see them and they came out of the park and were in the creek right next to Mr B's all the time we were in the park!

After the rhino hunting we went to a nearby village and dispensed some medical stuff, a volleyball and some skipping ropes and frisbees. The people were so grateful and humble. I have to say the non prescription glasses were a real hit and the joy from folks who could now read was remarkable.

We motored home through the countryside, passing villages and fields being harvested. Wheat, rice and lentils being harvested stalk by stalk by hand. You know they call marijuana 'weed', well it was literally everywhere as a weed even in their fields like we might have dandelions. Quite a sight. Got home to Mr B's tired and contented with life.

A Nepali Village

You know they say a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case it really would be but there won't be any pictures of Nepal till we get home. No pictures to show you the beautiful colors of the women's clothing or the color of the sky at dusk or the texture of a rhino's skin.
We are in a small village in western Nepal near Bardia National Park. The park is a stones throw away and has a total of 4,500 visitors a year so you hardly see a person there. It is a refuge for tigers, elephants, rhinos and dolphins and many species of snakes and birds. Some of these animals occasionally wander or rampage through the village. Sometimes elephants tear through and trample people or their livestock and homes. Our friend here has a theory that the elephants don't like people because they have a collective memory of the way they have been treated by humans.

We are on the outskirts of the village in a field on the savannah right next to a jungle. It's come as quite a surprise that the bugs are only bad in the early evening and early early morning. We have a cottage with a bathroom with cold shower but we mostly bathe from a bucket. Outside there's an enclosure with two mules who are retired after trekking across Tibet and a garden being newly landscaped. The fields around have people harvesting and weeding and carrying large bundles on their heads.

There is little to no traffic. There are very few motorbikes and only a few jeeps in the village. It's much more likely to see a cart being hauled by a couple of water buffaloes or cows or a family on a bicycle going by. There's a serenity that we tend to crave but can't always find at home.

The tribal women here wear a long ankle length smock of brightly patterned cotton. The rest of the women wear saris or long tunics with ankle length tunics in a rainbow of colors. Our friend who we're staying with decided that I should have one of the outfits. We went to market yesterday and all the ladies helped me pick out the material. It comes in co-ordinated packages of a gauzy scarf and cloth for top and bottom. Mine is dark blue for the top with red embroidery with mirrors. The pants will be a mustard yellow with sort of red dots and the scarf is mustard with red and a fringe of red beads. The materal cost 750 rupies, there are about 70 in a dollar, and the tailor will cost only 125 rupies.

In Kathmandu the prices are more geared to westerners, especially in the tourist area. Here the prices are real Nepali prices. For instance I sometimes go to the village and buy samosas or pekoras or doughnuts. The doughnuts are huge and cost 5 rupies, the pekoras are 1 rupie each and the samosas are also 5 rupies. Other things in Nepal are out of whack. A motorcycle here is roughly twice the price of other countries and a hat I bought in Cambodia for $1 would be 7 times that here. There is also speculation here like anywhere's else. Everyone thinks that Bardia is the next big thing in Nepal so the land prices have shot up because people are buying on speculation. Makes it really hard for the locals.

We've been volunteering in a local school which has been a joy because now wherever we go the kids know us. It's tough because they threw us right in to teach subjects and we didn't have a clue. They gave me grade 6 math and I refused to do it. That's because the kids were reviewing for exams and I didn't want to confuse them! Because the kids have already done the work i just do a quick review and then I play educational games with them. There are kids as young as three in the school so you can imagine how cute they are in their little uniforms.

We brought tons of school supplies and medical supplies from Thailand. Yesterday we spent the day dispensing non prescription reading glasses to mostly older folks. It was so gratifying to see people light up when they could see. Because of this contact we were able to get some fantastic pictures. We've found out that it's nearly impossible to send things here so we'll need to find travelers who are coming this way in order to send more stuff. We only had a dozen pairs of glasses and we could have had a hundred.

The kitchen is a seperate building with a clay stove with two ports for cooking. It's mind boggling how they can fire it up and boil water in a flash. All wood of course and sometimes really hot and smoky. We all take turns cooking. There are four teenage boys here who all help out and two of them love to cook. They're trying to figure out what foreigners like so they can make it for their guests. I am going to help them make a menu and come up with some stuff. Last night I made a meal that was a big hit. I bought kidney beans and they cooked them in the pressure cooker and then they ground some cumin and corriander into a paste and I made refried beans with garlic and onion. I made salsa with lime, garlic, chili, onion, some of the corriander and cumin paste, fresh tomato and corriander. The boys made chapatis and we grated some carrots and we had a feast of makeshift and tasty burritos.

The common and daily eaten meal here is called dahl bat. I probably didn't spell that right! It consists of a thin lentil soup you pour over rice and a curry of some kind. It seems to have either rice or chapatis and sometimes has curd (yogurt) and some pickle or hot sauce. When the soup is poured over the rice it is mixed up with whichever hand you don't use for the toilet and then it is eaten with the hand. The food is mixed up with gusto and gets all the way up to the top of the fingers. I don't know how they do it. More and more places offer spoons and forks to foreigners.

Electricity is iffy in Nepal. In the capital city, Kathmandu, we had power for only 2-3 hours a day. Here we have power all day which is not used and then come dusk it goes off for three hours! We are going to bed early and getting lots more sleep than we're used to.

Just one last thing. It's really hot here and getting hotter by the day but somehow it's ok. There's a breeze most days and always a shady spot to sit. I am drinking water like mad but peeing very little, it mostly comes out the pores......

Nepal and Mr B's

Nemaste to you all. This is just a short post to let you all know that we have arrived safely to a remote part of Nepal near Bardia National Park. We flew into Kathmandu and stayed two days and then off on an overnight bus ride for 14 hours. It's funny but I said after our last overnight bus ride that it was the last one but this one was already arranged for us.
I had read that bus travel is the most dangerous thing you could do in Nepal and never to go at night. Well we found out why! The bus was overcrowded and the road made the backroads of Nova Scotia look great. Thankfully we were on the inside of the road (when the driver stayed on it!) because the outside was sheer drops and washed out edges and curvy curvy and up and down. Sometime about 2 in the morning after hours of the driver driving like a maniac, he sideswiped a transport and all the rear widows on our side of the bus got blown out and the bus filled with smoke. Everyone scrambled off the bus and luckily no serious injuries. The driver ran away at first because it is common to have the passengers attack the driver in these situations especially if he hasn't been driving properly.
After standing on the side of the road, there were no other tourists on the bus, for a few hours and the driver coming back it was decided that we should continue. It was with great relief that we eventually saw the sign for Ambossa where we were headed. We were greeted by the friendly smiles of Mr. B who is a friend of Oliver's. We are staying in his guesthouse and hoping to volunteer here somewheres. He and his wife also stay here because they have so many people in their home.
So that's it I guess. I'd love to tell you lots more but I can't use the computer for long. We have already fallen in love with Nepal and have lots to tell already but it will have to wait for another time.......

A Dental Dilema

Hi everyone. I just thought I'd let you know what our latest adventure is. When we were leaving Cambodia 5 weeks ago I bit down while eating and something happened to a back molar. Yikes did it ever hurt! I developed a permanent toothe ache and eventually an ache along both my upper and lower jaw. Now you have to understand, in Cambodia anyone can hang out a dentist sign and in Vietnam it was nearly as bad but also Tet which is their New Years. Tet lasts over two weeks and is impossible to get anything done. I took anti b's ( you can buy them over the counter just incase it was infected and hoped like hell it could wait till Bangkok.
I looked up a good dental hospital in Bangkok and the day after we got here, a Sunday, I was getting accessed. by that afternoon I was on my way to a filing, no need for root canal. It was bloody scary though because I had the tail end of a cold when you have all that awful stuff in your throat, I felt like I was choking the entire time!
Now here's the good part. This hospital is state of the art and you go from accessment to appropriate expert bang, bang, bang. I even saw a video of my procedure which looked like one of those cheesy real life medical shows where everything was jiggly because of where the camera was mounted. Right now I'm sitting in a waiting area with free wifi and a cumputer to use as well as a huge central pool type fountain, large screen tv, a three story window and a chic cafe.
Sorry I got off track. While I was here the first time Philip decided to have a cleaning and check up. Well it's now in the middle of three root canals and four crowns later! We're stuck in Bangkok getting all this done.....and it won't be completely finished till we get back here after Nepal on our way home!
Now you might think how could this happen and are we being taken for a ride? No is the answer. We can see all the evidence on various diagnostic equipment, xrays etc and we have come to trust these people really quickly. In fact we've never seen such a professional facility anywhere. The problem is our dentist knows we have no insurance, so while trying to keep our teeth healthy he has stayed away from big work he probably knew was coming. Also he has been semi retired for a few years and our care has gone from consistant to patchy.
The good news is that the cost is likely to end up being well under half of what it would cost at home...having said that, damn it!

On a side note the other evening we found ourselves in a state of the art imax movie theatre watching Johnnie Dep do his thing in 3d inAlice in Wonderland, on the first day of it's release here and for that matter maybe anywhere! Not as good as we thought it would be but definitely entertaining.

Tam Coc, Vietnam

We had a day to spare before flying back to Bangkok from Ha Noi so we decided to go on a tour to Tam Coc. We had been hoping to go to the area for a few days but it was difficult because of Tet so this was our chance.
We were a bit sneaky because we bought the tour from a place othera than our hotel we went there to meet the bus so that our hotel wouldn't know. Silly I know but we like to spread the money around and sometimes guesthouses and hotels get irritated with you if you don't use their services.
Anyway the bus came and then spent two frigging hours picking up people all ove the city. It was good and bad, like a tour of the city but with no information like if we spent the time doing this we would add the time on the back end of the day so that we could fit it all in!
About 20 minutes after leaving Ha Noi we stopped for a 'rest', you know toilets and an opportunity for someone to sell us something. At this time we came to realize that half of the people had bought a tour and the other half a bus ride to a destination close to where the tour went. However they were told they would be there in 2 hours and they didn't get there for nearly 6 hours because everytime the bus stopped to show us something they had to stay on it and it took a long time!
Our ultimate destination was Tam Coc where we signed up to ride bicycles around the village and take a boat ride through some amazing scenery. Well the bike riding turned out to be a 12 km ride in blazing sun. Thank god I had sunscreen and a hat because I had just severely burned my face with wind and sun in Sappa and it had pealed and was now a brand new layer of skin. The ride was beautiful but I had to ride fast in order to control my bike so I got really hot.
You can see from the first pictures the scenery and things we saw on the bike ride. When you get to the picture of the boats with one woman that's where we started the boat ride. There w3re over a thousand boats. Although it was a little like a river highway with all that traffic it was also really peaceful because they were rowed and had no motors.
We were on the river for about 3 hours. We went under three mountains through caves that the river ran through and saw emerald green rice paddies with mountains rising straight out of them. It was so beautiful. When we got to the turning point there were tons of boats waiting to sell us refreshments and souvenirs. They never miss an entreprenurial opportunity in Vietnam.
After a surprisingly good meal the bus headed back to Ha Noi with a bunch of contented tourists on it. Unfortunately for the guide there were no tips because of the debacle in the beginning and his ability with the English language. He was quite insulting to many of us without realizing it!