Friday, 5/25.  Final post.  Transfer to Kathmandu was uneventful.  Farewell dinner.  Wedding event at the hotel.  As with other SE Asia countries, weddings require three days.  This was day two.  Pool party.  Heavily armed security, I think for specific guests because they left before the party was over.

Nepal was fascinating, as were the other countries I visited.  But their diet is not nearly as varied as the USA, again as were the other countries.  I think this was possibly the design of the tour group to 1) keep things simple for our tender stomachs, and 2) stick with foods which conforms with the nation’s tradition.  I found the food repetitive and largely bland(!).  There were limited attempts to vary the meals, but in the end it failed for me.  I leave this 50 day adventure desperate for a host of differing foods.

Final pictures:

Looks like a Bachelorette Party, but there are guys there too. There was also a dance rehearsal.

Live cows in the middle of the road. Just another day of traffic. I had a thought: What if Hinduism had decided that elephants were sacred?

Thursday, 5/24.  Last real day of this Adventure.  An elephant briefing, then a fantastic time giving her a scrub with a rock.  Extremely well behaved.  Throw my hat on the round, she kindly picked it up and handed (trunked?) it to her handler.  Twice, because the first time I was too amazed to take a picture.  I’d compare the experience favorably with the Panda Sanctuary.  I have the option of riding an elephant tomorrow, but I’ll pass.  I doubt that it can compare with washing one.

Four hour drive around the National Park.  It’s a preserve, so no guaranteed look at anything.  Mostly trees and bushes.  The rhinos were the high point.  A brief look at a komodo dragon, many deer, birds galore.  Gators in a breeding farm.  (During monsoon season Nepal’s gators flow downstream to India, so they have to keep releasing more into the wild.  I don’t know what India thinks about the process.)  No sign of wild elephants or tigers.  The Army has 1,000 soldiers stationed in the park to discourage poachers.  It works: last year not a single rhino was poached.

Tomorrow we fly 20 minutes to Kathmandu (109 miles: a drive would take 5 hours!).  A farewell dinner.  Saturday I fly to New Delhi (a five hour layover) , then Hong Kong (six hours), then LA.  Arrive Sunday.  I shall probably post a recap of the entire Adventure, but it may take a while to get all my thoughts in order.  Movies to see, ribeye steaks to eat.  Pizza!

During the briefing, she would rest her trunk on the post.

Feeding.

My hat!

Very cool hat retrieval system.

This snail is no less than four inches long.

Mon-Wed, 5/21-23.  (Pictures will follow.)  Another long drive over bad roads.  Met Rafting crew.  Captain is smart and funny.  Paddling instructions simple.  “And Stooooooooop. Thank you very much.”  First day not much of anything.  Lunch boxes.  Kit Kats were a melted mess.  Camp is above average, as usual for the tour company.  My tent was the only one directly connected to my personal bathroom.  Others had to unzip the tent, then zip the tent (bugs), then walk three feet to their personal bathrooms.  Don’t know how I lucked out.

Hot! Humid!  Bad sleep, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared.  Between two and five I slept like the dead.  Massive spider on tent wall.  Not poisonous.

Rain in the morning, sometimes heavy.  Took the opportunity to skip the walk.  Sun came out at noon, so I did the afternoon walk to a “village” and suspended walkway.  Incredibly humid.  Everyone regretted the trek.

Slept badly again, though it again could have been worse.  I desperately wanted to get back to either cool air or AC. Rafting was much more exciting.  Wet.  At destination we encountered a fairly smooth, brand new road!  A first for Nepal.  It’s the main road from India.  About five miles of heaven.  Then we were back on Nepal-normal bumps.

Our Chitwan National Park Resort has the weirdest rooms.  Entry from outside into an open air vestibule with a pond and couch.  Right is the AC bedroom.  Left is the non-AC bathroom.  The shower is only partially covered.

Chitwan is incredibly hot and humid (I’m repeating myself).  Ox ride into a very poor community village.  Old-style hand-water pumps in the front yards.  Brought joy to one extended family with printed pictures of them.  Back at the resort I took a dip in the pool with my Bhutan Buddies and talked about the “others”.  Just before dinner we had a big surprise.  It was one person’s birthday, and Sanjeev arranged for an elephant to walk into the pool patio with a sign and cake!  Petting the elephant was a blast.  Fed her an apple.

5/16-19. A partial display.

Hazy Day. A look across the valley. Farms everywhere, but many plots are unused. Reduced population.

Nearly every house has a beehive. They pull out the honey twice a year.

Our baggage handlers. Baskets are carried with straps laying across their foreheads.

Assistant mountain guide who brought up the rear. Since I hung back from the talkative pack, we hiked together. Silently.

Cheerful basket weaver.

Midwives in their midwife uniform.

Annapurna South. (Point of interest: For locals, if the top snow melts away in summer, it’s a “hill”, not a mountain. Yikes.)

Nice picture I think. Extremely well behaved children.  Teachers simply murmur, students respond.

Sun, 5/20.  Trying to upload a few pictures.

International Mountain Museum.  Too much to see in the time allotted.  Building is repurposed from a warehouse(?).  Cavernous.  I could have spent days in the place.  Bought “Into Thin Air”, apparently a nonfiction book about how not to climb mountains.

Tibetan refugee camp.  They make carpets of questionable quality (when compared to Morocco, etc.).  Low prices.  They’ve been in Nepal since the 50s, yet are still people without a country.  They don’t want to return to Tibet and China wouldn’t let them in anyway.  Nepal won’t give them citizenship.  What a stubborn world.  The same situation exists with Nepalese in Bhutan (there since the 1920s!), though the Bhutan king seems to be bending a little.

We did the boat ride.  A party boat with foot-powered paddle wheels.  I was too large and inflexible to paddle much.  Boring.

After lunch I rested.  Bought a simple watch for tomorrow’s river rafting.  

Dinner was at a local home.  The 13-year-old spoke the best English, but he kept popping over to the uncle’s house, who was also hosting some of us.  Apparently they were more fun.  The 17 year-old, whose English was heavily accented, supports the outlawed but still prevalent caste system (they are in the highest caste, so . . .).  Wants to be a banker.  Dinner was pretty much what we’ve been served all week, so I have to believe they were told what to serve.  Yogurt (dessert) is liquid, which I’m beginning to prefer.  All in all, it seemed to me that they host foreigners just for the extra income (they are paid).  They father was distant.  The house was unprepared for guests.  Went to the same bar as last night.  New band.  “I Want to Hold Your Hand”.  Great guitar, very questionable vocals.  Delicious apple pie.

Out of touch until Wednesday. Rafting.  I think everyone in the group has done rafting somewhere in the world before.  We don’t expect much rapids, being the wrong time of year for high water.  I’m not very excited.  It’s going to be hot and humid, with bugs.  Limited showers and questionable water quality at the two day overnight spot.