Chitwan National Park

Kathmandu to Bharatpur is only a 25 minute flight, but early morning rainstorms closed airports delaying flights for a couple hours. We finally arrived in Bharatpur about 1 p.m to take a one hour bus drive thru a small prosperous city, then thru a rural countryside of rice, corn, and banana plantations, arriving at the Temple Tiger Green Jungle Resort, just outside the boundaries of Chitwan National Park, on the border with India. A lunch of local foods and we were off for a three hour jeep truck safari. We saw one horned rhinos, three species of deer, wild boars, native peacocks during mating season, rhesus monkeys, in the trees, domestic elephants with riders, and local people walking out of the park with enormous loads of vegetation on their backs to feed their animals. We also huddled for about ten minutes in ponchos and under umbrellas in the back of the jeeps (Tata brand made in India and modified for safari use in Nepal) as a thunderstorm unloaded on us with giant raindrops. Then a naturalist talk for 45 minutes about the park's critters. To top things off as we were preparing to sleep for the night, we had what was likely a civet getting some exercise on the roof of our elevated duplex cabin building.Read more