If You're Taking a Short Trip to Nepal - We Recommend...

The following was written to a relative going to Nepal for a short trip by my girlfriend Meredith.

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A Lonely Planet is most necessary, especially for a short trip. The other essential document you will need if you plan on doing anything outside of the city center (and you should) is the "Tourist Map of the Kathmandu Valley". It shows all the hiking trails andsmaller roads and villages and stuff.

RECOMMENDED ACTIVITIES and FOOD

There are a few things you absolutely have to do that are on the beaten tourist track, but are on there for a reason:

1. Pashupatinath Temple - Hindu temple complex where they do ritual cremations on the Bagmati River. You can watch the cremations but shouldn't take pictures, as there are real funerals taking place.

2. Boudanath Stupa - this is the main monument in the Tibetan part of town. Tibetan Buddhists will be "circumnambulating"the stupa (a prayer practice where they walk in one direction around it multiple times) and there are lots of touristy shops around the path to look in. Some of the best Tibetan restaurants are there with roof gardens and great views of the stupa, and it's nice to go around sunset if you can. The entire neighborhood (called "Bouda") is a Tibetan neighborhood and there are tons of smaller temples, monasteries and monuments scattered about. I think the Lonely Planet will list them, but if not there's a list and map painted on a wall at one end of the main stupa area. It's a great place to spend a day or a few hours wandering around.

3. Swayambunath (the monkey temple) - one of the most important Buddhist stupas in the city, and has monkeys running around freely on its grounds. You have to walk up a very steep, long set of stairs to get to it, and there are incredible 360 views of the city when you getup there. If you can't do stairs there is a way to take a taxi up to the top.

4. Kathmandu Durbar Square - the main temple/palace complex of the city. You will have to pay a fee to get in, and people will try to get you to hire them as "guides" to show you around. We did it once and it was fun, but not necessary. (Lauren thinks you should get a guide, just set the price beforehand, should be about 500 rupees) Check out the temples, the "Kumari" (a child goddess) house, and wander a bit around the neighborhood - this is a great place to just walk and get lost. In any direction is real Nepali urban fabric - not so touristy and with genuine shops and markets catering to nepali people. In one direction is a market that sells beautiful metal ware.

4. Bhaktapur - the Newari people are the original inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley, and this is their city, still almost perfectly preserved with all the architecture being from (I think) the 12th century or something like that. It's about 10 miles from Kathmandu,and will be about 2 hours on public transportation. In a taxi it might be about 1 hour. You should spend the day if you get a chance.

5. Patan Durbar Square - Like I said on the phone, "Kathmandu" is really made up of 2 cities - Kathmandu proper and Patan, which is continuous with Kathmandu but separated by the Bagmati river. Patan is the greatest - we lived there and it's just much more chill and less touristy, though there is a definite tourist presence. Patan has its own Durbar (palace) square, similar to the one in Kathmandu -Lauren and I think it's even more impressive. The neighborhood around it, likewise, is a maze of shops and smaller temples and monuments, great for wandering.

Lonely Planet has a fantastic walking tour for Patan Durbar square and neighborhood, and actually also one for Kathmandu Durbar square - definitely do those two when you are in those neighborhoods and any other of the walking tours in the book if you get a chance. They are generally very helpful and you see a lot of stuff that you otherwisewould have missed.

Since we lived in Patan we have lots of places that we love and could recommend, but not sure if they're appropriate for such a short trip -a lot of it is expat stuff. One thing you have to do if you go to Patan is eat at our favorite restaurant, Mustang Thakali Kitchen. There are no street names, so the best I can do in the way of directions is this: Get in a cab, and tell them to bring you to Namaste Supermarket in Pulchowk (pronounced Pool-choke). From Namaste you walk directly across the main road and down a smaller road that runs perpendicular to the main road, and after about 5-10 minutes the restaurant will be on your left. There is also a really good German bakery on that road, as well as a sort of health club where you canuse the pool, get a massage, sauna, etc. If you walk around the neighborhood, called Jhamsikhel, you'll find several businesses and venues catering to expats, there might be some good live music or something around so keep an eye out. That spot is about a 20 minutewalk from Patan Durbar Square, so you could make a day of it.

Anyway, at the restaurant you should order the Thali plate. This is the standard Nepali meal and comes with rice (or you can try Dhendo instead of rice, sort of a buckwheat paste indigenous to the Mustang region), a vegetable curry-thing or two, a spicy tomato condiment called achar, yogurt, a few slices of fresh cucumber and radish, and dal (lentil soup to pour on the rice). Also meat if you want it. This is our favorite place for Thali, but it is ubiquitous in the cityand throughout the country, and in all but the most touristy restaurants you get free refills ad infinitum. Try it everywhere, it is always a bit different and always delicious. Other tasty things to eat include bara - a newari pizza-like snack with egg or meat, roti thali-a thali with flatbread instead of rice, momo - nepali/tibetan dumplings, thenthuk - noodle soup, and newari snacks - small, tapas-like plates of different stuff.

THAMEL

Thamel is the tourist ghetto in Kathmandu, which is not to say that it isn't fun. Nightlife centers around this neighborhood and there are tons of shops and restaurants to try out. There's plenty of live music at night. There is a great spa there (a real one, many are brothels) to get massages, treatments, sauna, etc called Serendipity on Z Street. If you like spas it's the best. Another great place in Thamel is Thamel House, an upscale Newari restaurant, where our friend Susila's husband is a chef. They used to have a traditional Nepali dance show nightly. Other than that, Thamel is just a place to hang out and be a tourist. Eat, drink and be merry and so on.

Near Thamel is a neighborhood called Lazimpat, which is a cool spot with restaurants and nightclubs that both expats and more worldly Nepalis tend to hang out in. Do some research on the Google if you want to know if there's stuff happening over there.

BUSES and HIKES

Kathmandu Valley has a massive network of hiking trails, and in general you take a bus somewhere up near the rim of the valley, which is like a big bowl, and walk down, in some cases all the way back to the city. You mostly get the buses out into the valley at the main city bus area, Sundara, and it's a pretty crazy scene and very confusing. The buses, also, are usually more like vans, but sometimes will be actual buses. Different numbers go different places, but sometimes the numbers aren't clearly marked so ask the drivers where the bus to your destination is at until you find it. If you can, ask someone at your hostel what bus to take. They leave all the time, there is no schedule.

In order, our favorite hikes are to:

1. Changu Narayan - a beautiful, extremely well-preserved, and not-so-crowded temple complex in the hills. You could take a taxi to the trailhead, in an area called Chalantar I think (there isn't anything there) and take like a 45 min hike to Changu and then walk downhill back to Boudanath (for a sunset meal) or to Bhaktapur. Alternatively, you could start in Bhaktapur (maybe if you stay overnight there one night, or go very early in the morning) and take a bus up directly to Changu, then walk down to Bouda.

2. Dashinkali - another Hindu temple that has continuous animal sacrifices on Tuesdays and Saturdays. It's very unlikely you'll see other tourists there so you'll feel really cool. You take a bus (or taxi) directly to Dashinkali temple and then hike down to Pharping, a little town with a “Pilgrimage Route” through various Buddhist and Hindu temples/monuments. It's pretty far from the city so when you're tired of walking take a bus back.

3. Shivapuri National Park - You take a bus to the town just below the park, called Budanil Kantha. In town there's a famous Vishnu templeto check out, with an impressive snake sculpture. From town it's a mile or 2 uphill to the park entrance and there's no bus, so take a taxi - or you could hitchhike like we did. It costs 500 rupees to get into the park. Inside the park we hiked up to a Buddhist Nunnery called Nagi Gompa (where for a few rupees they'll probably feed you dal bhaat, means dal and rice) and then had a three hour hike down to Boudanath Stupa through the small village of Kopan along a gorgeous ridge through a pine forest. The trail gets pretty rough in one place just after the nunnery, it's just clamboring down a steep hillsideover a bunch of rocks, but it picks up again and is one of the best hikes we did. As long as you keep going downhill, you'll always endup in the right place.

From anywhere in the valley, almost any bus you get on should go backto Sundara, or at least somewhere in the central city - so if you get lost or tired, just hop on one to get home.

There's other awesome stuff in the valley to do besides these hikes, so look in the lonely planet and see if anything catches your eye.

BANDIPUR

If you want to get out of kathmandu for a few nights and see how rural Nepalis live, go to Bandipur. It's a 3 or 4 hour trip on a public bus, and you should probably plan to stay 2 nights. It's in the mountains and is just ridiculously gorgeous. There's a small town that has a bunch of tasty restaurants, and places to take short hikes to, like a silk farm, all overlooking incredible views of terraced farmland and Himalayan forest. The hostels there are pretty grody, but try to get a room with a view of the valley and it's not too bad. If you want a little more comfort there is one very nice inn, that I think will run you $30 a night - kind of a fortune in Nepal. Lonely Planet has all the info you need to get there, or ask someone at your hostel.

People might suggest that you go to Pokhara as a trip outside ofkathmandu, but don't listen. Though it has a beautiful lake and somenice hiking, it's mostly a tourist trap and you might as well just stay in Thamel.

WHERE TO STAY

Since we had an apartment while we lived there, we never got really well acquainted with hotels and hostels, so it's going to be hard to recommend where to stay. In the case that there's strikes while you're there (they're very common), I suggest you stay somewhere around Kathmandu Durbar Square which will be a good central place to walk to various sites. It's about a 20 minute walk to Thamel from there, and near Sundara, the central bus area. You could also just stay in Thamel, as there are plenty of hostels and it's near the nightlife. If there were no strikes (called Bandhs in Nepali) I would probably encourage you to stay near Patan Durbar Square, but I think you should play it safe and stay near Thamel/Durbar Square since things are a bit uncertain right now.

A decent room in any budget hostel should be about 600 - 900 rupees a night.

MONEY

Whenever you buy anything, especially in tourist areas or with taxis, people will try to overcharge you because you look like an easy mark. If you can, try to ask a nepali friend or hotel concierge what the acceptable price for any given thing should be beforehand, and feel free to haggle the quoted price down for pretty much anything. You will probably end up paying a premium anyway, so best to make peace with that - anyway, you can afford it as the extra is still next tonothing for an America

Now I'm Back

I've returned to NYC. I should probably do a post about what I learned in Nepal, but I think all my posts - 49 of them! - speak for the experience. Maybe I'll feel compelled to do one later, but for now I'll say goodbye.

Thanks for reading!!

Dogmandu

It's really easy to take the name "Kathmandu" and change the first syllable into another word that fits with whatever theme you like. Like: Dogmandu. Mapmandu. Madmandu. Stupidmandu. It all works. I don't know why.

That had nothing to do with this new post which is, you guessed it, about Dogs. As I get ready to bid farewell this strange and wonderful city, I think about the things I will miss the most and they are: Meredith (she'll be staying on for a bit), the Dogs, the people, especially: Shusila; Sara; Pia; Netus; Prajwel, Dal Bhaat, my apartment, tikas, and the mountains.

So here's a tribute to my favorite pups (and one alternating goat).

In no particular order, except that I mention my favorite dog at the end.

Warning: There will be an indecent amount of anthropomorphizing in the following statements. And some sad stories, also.


1. The Couple

This is a pair of dogs that Meredith and I met when we moved into our new apartment in Sanepa after having lived for a month in Kupondole at Alberts' place. We've been at this apartment for 3 months and have only just convinced The Couple that we won't hurt them and want to be their friends. After months of saying "hello" to them, trying to pet them, and occasionally offering them food, we finally got to pet them for the first time a few days ago. I didn't feel as triumphant as I thought I would have. In fact, I felt a little silly considering how much I wanted them to like me.

These dogs are never apart. They almost move as one. We never really gave them separate names, except for that I started to regard the skittish, nervous, slightly interested one as representing me, and the relaxed, aloof one as Meredith. So, I would say things like: "Oh, look, there's me. I'm licking my butt."





2.Mangy Reynold and Mangy Benji

To earn a name that has a "Mangy" in front of it, is no easy feat. You really have to be dirty, scabby, hairless, eyeless, and smelly to deserve the Mangy adjective.

Mangy Reynold and Mangy Benji were two of the first dogs Meredith and I named. They live a few blocks away from our apartment, on a small road with a few shops. They would sit there together (never touching) all day, waiting to scavenge for food at the mini-restaurant. They never wandered from their home. Ever. I would see them there day and night.

Sad story: one day I went to do some errands and noticed Mangy Benji lying near a pile of trash. When I came back a few hours later, he was in the exact same spot. I thought it was strange, but dismissed it as a comfy position. The next night Meredith and I were coming home from dinner and I noticed he was still there, in the same position. There was no doubt about it, he had died. There he lay for almost a week before someone took his body away. It was really sad. I wondered if any of the shop owners had become attached to him (from a distance, because this was not a dog you touched or cuddled) and were sad, too.

I don't have a picture of Manjy Benji, but here's Mangy Reynold, who seems to have soldiered on despite the loss of his buddy:



3. Crazy Eye

Crazy Eye is a dog we see infrequently because he lives farther away from us than the rest of these dogs. There were times I thought maybe he had an owner because we was so clean and shiny. We call him Crazy Eye because he is one of the most beautiful dogs, and you think this until all of sudden you notice his slightly off-center eye. And you only notice it because of his all-around studliness.




4. Bloody Eye

Poor Bloody Eye, his eye is bloody and I'm always avoiding him. I noticed this fella one day with an eye full of blood and pus and a large blood-covered protrusion that may have been his eye but probably was just an inflamed part of his eye socket. His eye healed daily and for a while was just bloody with a weird white string poking out from his socket. Now, it's just bloody. Here he is:




5. Changba

Changba is my least favorite thing in Nepal. Like, worse than all the trash in the street and oglers who stare at my chest. Changba sucks and I live with him. He's our landlords' dog and he lives right next to the entrance to my apartment. Despite the fact that we've lived here for three months, he still barks at us like we're about to rob the place. We fed him food a few times and he would bark ferociously in between mouthfuls. He's mean. The guy who lived here before us got Changba to stop barking at him and be his friend after a year. Except one night Changba took a bite out of his leg. Here's his stupidface in all its glory:




6. Mangy Griselda

Mangy Griselda is a boy dog, but Meredith named him without checking his privates first. Now we notice his sad little balls and feel bad for calling him a girls name - but it's too late to change. Mangy Griselda seems to have an owner, but the owner only feeds him and puts a cardboard mat outside the house as a bed for him to sleep on. His eyes are small and seem to be covered with a weird film that makes me think he can't see very well. His tail and the back part of his torso is virtually hairless. He's not a dog you pet with your hand, but he clearly wants affection. We've started pulling small branches off of trees to pet him. I don't think he realizes the difference. He's a sweet little thing:





7. Death Row Goat

This is not a particular goat that we love, but rather a weird phenomenon that happens on a street near our apartment. It's a goat that is tied up in front of a butchers, like an advertisement. He or she sits there munching on greenery until someone decides they want mutton for dinner and that's that. One goat made it for almost two weeks, and we'd always wave at him with disbelief at his staying power.

We can't take credit for this name (Death Row Goat), our American friends Keri and James made it up. Here's one goat, creepily smiling:




8. Baby Daddy

This big boy has clearly sired many of the little pups in our neighborhood. He is a bossy, big shouldered, manly dog that wants to have puppies and then move on. Meredith thinks Baby Mama (see below) is his steady girlfriend - I'm not so sure. We've pet him a little bit, but he really only comes around when we have food.




9. Baby Mama

Finally, I come to the best dog in the world (besides Bodhi) that makes me reconsider leaving Nepal. She is the sweetest, most lovable little thing and was the first dog to make an effort to get to know us. We started noticing her around about a month and a half ago. I don't think she has an owner and mostly resides around our neighborhood and down our little dirt road. At the beginning, we would pet her as we left our apartment and say a little hello. She's pretty clean, a little oily and some scratches, but nothing too bad. Sometimes when we would come home at night, she would meet us a few blocks away from our apartment and escort us home. Sometimes Mangy Griselda would be there with her and we would hope he didn't notice us only petting her.

One day, we noticed Baby Mama had a huge cut on her eye. Mainly it was on the bottom part, but it was a pretty nasty abrasion. I thought it would heal itself, just like Bloody Eye had healed on his own, but as the days went on it seemed to be getting worse and she was looking exceedingly fatigued. She stopped roaming around, and would sleep all day near our apartment. I tried calling some local veterinarians, but no one would pick up.

Finally, my brave little Meredith took matters into her own hands. She started washing the wound with water and applying Neosporin to it. We got some antibiotics that were designed for kids and gave her bread soaked in it. It seemed like she wasn't getting better and she started refusing to eat anything. She was barely walking and would shake when she stood up. We thought it was over for good and she would surely die soon. It was really depressing.

Then, suddenly she started getting better! She would eat more and was wandering around and her eye seemed to be healing. Now, she's back in full health. She eats ravenously and (sadly for us) is barely around our apartment. She roams the streets during the day and sometimes stops by to visit a neighbors puppy we believe she is either the mother or grandmother of. We see her maybe once a day. Last night we came home later and she escorted us home. She was so excited when she saw us, that she started whinnying like a wounded horse. It was adorable.

Here we are:





And that's our Dogmandu.

Making Do Thanksgiving (Or, How To Cope With a Baking Holiday When You Don't Have an Oven)

Thanksgiving this year just wasn't the same. I don't really mean that in a bad way. Given the option I probably would've chosen to be home for this holiday, but my friends here and I scraped together a pretty fine substitute that I wouldn't trade for anything now. Sure, it was hard, and took three days, and didn't turn out perfect, but it turned out pretty good enough and after I ate I got that too full feeling that is indicative of yummy Thanksgiving.

This endeavor began because our new American friend Sara has the same enthusiasm for Thanksgiving as I do. When we met on November 5th it was one of the first things we brought up and decided, then and there, to do it. Since, Sara and her friend Keri had to leave Kathmandu before the actual day, we had it 6 days early. The preparations began on Wednesday. Sara, Mer, and I went to Bhat Battini Supermarket - a 5 floor monstrosity of food and clothing and other goods that would only be common place in the States. There we found a frozen $80 turkey that was too puny and too expensive for our tastes. However, this was a triumph for me because no one would believe there were any turkeys in Nepal. We gathered all the big supermarket items that we wouldn't be able to find in the local Nepali stores (things like confectioners sugar, whip cream mix, peanut butter) and had two cups each of this weird perfect corn stuff.

On Thursday we started gathering more ingredients near our houses. Sara lives in Patan and has a great open air market near her. Here's James (Sara's roommate), Kumar (Sara's boyfriend), Mer, and Sara walking to this market all Reservoir Dogs Style:



At the market, Mer busted out one of her many thousands of lists. I wish I had gotten a picture of all the lists together, but basically there were about ten lists all of which had the same ingredients on it, just in different orders. Here's Kumar, Sara, and Mer (with a list) at the market:



Then we headed to Sara, Keri, and James' apartment to cook the baked items. We had convinced a bakery called Fiji to bake some of our food items at around 7pm that evening. We made a pumpkin pie with fresh cinnamon, here's James grinding it in a bowl with the bottom of a wine bottle:



Sara instructed us all on her specialty: the no-bake peanut butter squares. Here's Mer doing her special double-boil-thing to heat up the chocolate and peanut butter:



Keri doesn't cook, so she hung around and kept us company:



At night we rushed over to Fiji Bakery to bake our pumpkin pie and stuffing. There was only one available oven and it didn't even go high enough to rightly cook the pumpkin pie. We knew we were going to be there for a while. Here's the owner (who studied cooking/baking in Japan), one of his daughters, a bakery employee, Mer and blurry Sara:



While we waited, we played with the owners kids doing boring things like shooting rubberbands and making funny faces. Here's Sara being less boring and tossing them around, they LOVED it:



After two hours of waiting and the pumpkin pie refusing to be finished, we went home with the promise to come pick things up in the morning. The next day we all went our separate ways: Sara picking things up around town, Mer cooking, me picking up things around town, James cooking at his apartment. Shusila came over early to help us finish up the cooking and make some saag:



Shusila brought her nephew Netus with her, and Kumar and I started playing cards with him. I taught them how to play Spoons and they taught me a Nepali card game. Here's them playing:



Sara made some excellent home-made apple cider in a coca cola bottle. She would heat it up and you could mix rum in it. Shit, it was good:



And here's the final spread (there's salad in that red bucket)



For my own reference, here's who came:

1, 2 Lauren/Mer (USA)
3 Sara (USA)
4 Kumar (Nepal)
5 James (USA)
6 Keri (USA)
7 Bhakta (Nepal)
8 Pia (Finland)
9 Naba (Nepal)
10 Albert (USA)
11 Rich (UK)
12 Arielle (USA)
13 - 17 Shajjan + 4 (Nepal)
18 Saroj (Nepal)
19 Shusila (Nepal)
20 Netus (Nepal)
21, 22 Min + 1 (Nepal)
23 Komako (Japan)
24 Mike (USA)
25 Danielle (USA)
26 Miriam (Austrailia)
27 - 30 Landlord and Co. + 4 (Nepal)

Changu Narayan

Another great hiking place in the Kathmandu Valley is around the Changu Narayan temple. Mer and I did this hike a while ago, and I'm writing about it now because I don't want to forget it or pretend like it was any less than the other hikes we went on. Anyhow, we were dropped off about 40 minutes away from the temple and then hiked up to it along a little hill ridge. The best view was from the hike, where you could see the steeples (I know that's a church word) rising above the trees. When we got there we found only a few other tourists, which I always consider a success when visiting special places. I mean, as a "foreign resident" I think you're entitled to explore the secrets of the city and be seen as cool by the natives for being one of the few foreigners to know about those secrets. Here's Changu:



Changu Narayan is supposedly the oldest temple in Nepal. Though, I've also heard that a temple in Panuati is the oldest. When I asked my landlord if Changu was the oldest temple in Nepal he said "Yes." When I asked him if the Panuati temple was the oldest, he said "Yes." So, that's helpful.

The best part of Changu besides the requisite Kali slaughter/sacrifice temple, were the dogs going around eating the wax after the candles expired:



Then we started our hike back to the city. This is when we started realizing that if we were not specifically in a hiking zone, no one would direct us to the dirt road hikes - only the main paved roads. Luckily, we found a few roundabout dirt roads on our own that led us past farms and the like. Here's a picture to prove it:



Back on the paved road we started feeling real dorky for pretending like we were hiking when we were really just walking on the main roads. Especially when there were buses going by us every ten minutes headed to our destination. So, we hopped on one of them and headed to Bodhanath Stupa.



We hung out at the Stupa for a bit and then ate at our favorite restaurant there called Tibet Kitchen. We took my Dad to this place when he was here, too. This is our standard meal there:

Potatoes with cheese sauce (Bhutanese)
Sampa (Tibetan thing that you mix yourself: wheat, tea, butter, sugar)
Brown Flour Momo's (Nepali - large dumplings)

Not healthy unless you count the Brown Flour. I do count it.

Mer wasn't ready to quit the day, so we walked over to Pashupatinath. It started getting dark and this is where Mer and I butt heads many evenings. When it gets dark, I start walking really quick and getting really nervous. When it gets dark, Mer acts like it's light out. So, while I'm trying to get to crowded places with lots of activity and light, she is just taking her sweet.....old.....time. For her part, we've never been threatened in any way at night. However, our old landlord always warned us to get home before dark and he's old, so he's wise, and must know.

Anyhow, Mer decides that it would the most awesome if we went up the back way around Pashupatinath. The back way is kinda like a hike. Which, I mean, wouldn't really be fun in darkness, but that doesn't matter! We find the back way despite a bunch of people trying to direct us to the front entrance. As we hike around the back of the temple we see a bunch of deer and monkeys playing together which, I guess, makes it worth it. Finally we come upon the temple which is all lit up with singing and dancing and people. According to some people who were there, the jolliness happens every night, but none of the Nepali's I've ever questioned have heard about it.



After getting stared at for a while, we went home.

Better and Better

I feel morally responsible to brag about the fact that I went to temple that is only open one day a year. It wasn't that fun, I didn't intend to visit it anyhow, and Mere took more pictures of it than I though humanly possible - but nonetheless, I've been to a temple that you probably haven't been to and I wanted you to know that. This temple is on a little pool in the middle of Kathmandu - if you live here you probably have seen it and thought "that's pretty" and then promptly moved on to more important things. Here's one of millions of shots Mere took:



The most interesting part of being at this temple were the Cool Nepali girls giving tikas. I assumed that you needed to be ordained or at least sanctioned in same way by Hindu priests to give out tikas - but I doubt these Cool girls had been authorized by anyone. Nonetheless, they seemed to having fun and making money.



Just thought I'd share.

Daddy Blog #5: 1000 Places to See Before You Die

The book,"1000 Places to See Before You Die," includes Nepal's Royal Chitwan National Park. What they don't tell you is that you have 1000 chances to die on the drive from Kathmandu to the park. It was the most harrowing drive of my life made worse by the thought that my daughter would die as well. (I didn't want Mer to die either.) The highway twists and turns through beautiful mountains and river valleys with picturesque villages scattered along the road. Fortunately I took a lot of photos along the way because there's no way I could appreciate the scenery while contemplating the final moments of my life. The problem is that sleep deprived and often drunk truck drivers pass each other on the winding, turning road. If they're going uphill then one truck is driving 8 mph in a valiant attempt to pass another truck going 6 mph. Its like a glacier race. Which would be so bad but who wants a head on collision with a glacier? I asked our driver (we hired a car and driver for the trip) if he liked his job. The 19 year-old young man said "No." He said the drunk, sleep deprived truck drivers make his a rather hazardous profession not to mention the cost of petrol. He wanted to complete his schooling and get a safer job. After we got to Chitwan I really enjoyed looking at all the photos I'd taken along the way.





Royal Chitwan is almost 400 square miles that were once the private hunting grounds of the King of Nepal and his guests. According to Wikipedia, its one of the finest protected forests and grassland regions in Asia. (That's good because King George V on one trip shot 39 tigers and 57 rhinos.) The best part are the elephants and their capable mahouts (handlers) who stood ready to take us into the jungle in search of rhinos, Bengal tigers and assorted other creatures. (I could have done without the leeches.) We weren't there for it, but one of the guides said elephant polo matches take place during one of their holiday festivals in December. I bet that registers at least a 7 on the Richter Scale.



Happy to be alive, we met one of our guides, Shiva, at the hotel and safari camp. He took us on an early evening walk as the sun was setting over the river where we relaxed and watched dug out canoes floated leisurely by. It was lovely. However, it took a while to get used to Shiva's 'instructions'. His words were friendly but his tone didn't match. He must have been in the military or a dog trainer before the hotel job. It felt like he was barking orders at us to enjoy ourselves: "Sit here!!! Watch sunset!!! Do you want lemonade!!! Enjoy!!!". Later Shiva turned up again as one of the servers in the resort dining area. I was afraid he would be yelling at me to eat my veggies. But no. He was really a great guy and after dinner made a special effort to take us to visit the elephants in their outdoor stalls. Shiva calmed down and we had about an hour just standing in the moon light with the elephants. They are truly magnificent, awesome (I hate that word) creatures and I felt privileged hanging out with them. I resisted the urge to set them free.

The next day after the three hour safari on elephant back into the jungle (we saw a rhino mommy with her cute baby in a muddy little lake) we got to help give them a bath.



After a hard day of carting tourists around the elephants enjoy cooling off in the river and getting a bath. We were allowed to ride elephant bareback into the river with them. The mahouts gave them the signal and they shook us on into the water. Then they filled their trunks with water and sprayed us. It was a childhood fantasy come true. Fortunately when they plopped over for their bath they didn't crush any tourists in the process. At least I didn't see any. I did see some mighty elephant turds floating by but I reminded myself that elephants are vegetarians. Organic poop can't be that bad.



It was reassuring to hear that the new Nepalese government has done a lot to save from near extinction the one horned black rhino. There is also a wonderful elephant breeding area which we were able to visit. Unfortunately, pollution from upstream industries is endangering the rivers flowing into Chitwan. Dolphins have dissappeared from one of their prime habitats and the main species of crocodiles are barely hanging on thanks to special efforts from an environmental group. As usual, tourists are a mixed blessing, but at least our dollars help make the animals worth a little more alive than dead from the poachers and pollution.

The end of our time in Chitwan came too soon. As we got into the car for our return journey to Kathmandu and for part two of "1000 ways to die...", we waved goodbye to Shiva and his enthusiastic approach to herding tourists.