After a nice and thrilling day off in Chitwan I headed to my next stopover, Lumbini. It was about 170 kms from Sauraha so I needed two easy days. From now on it was cycling on almost “table pool”-flat Terai plains, or so I thought;)
I woke up around 9:00am. I know I was getting too lazy;) I went out for a quick breakfast and who didn’t I meet again: Nicolai. OK, I first saw him yesterday night when I stepped into Alfresco restaurant for a late dinner. We both started from Kathmandu on the same day, Nov. 20th. He told me later that he left a bit too late and headed for a slightly different route, via two mountain ranges to Heutada. No way Jose!!! I checked my map thoroughly and discounted the road right from the beginning. Yes, I do like mountains but not that much;) The road would take me from 700 meters to a village at almost 2,500 meters high and wound up being lot longer than just going around the ranges and follow rivers and valleys. Actually, even main traffic goes around rather than through the ranges. But hey congratulations and more power to you, Nicolai;) You made it.
So, I saw him again this morning at one of the ‘fancier’ road stalls and joined him for the breakfast. Eventually, I was able to head out shortly before noon. It was 6 kms back to the Mahendra highway, another 17-18 kms to Narayangadh and then following Narayan river in direction of Butwal.
I stopped for some refreshments, mostly cold drinks, in a smaller village. I still had some Snicker bars left. When I wanted to give the shopkeeper my Snicker bars wraps, I couldn’t find any trash basket. So, a young kid, probably family of the shopkeeper, took it from away me and threw it over a three feet tall sidewall. I only rolled my eyes and laughed ironically. The owner asked me why… Without going into a long tirade about protecting the environment and having respect for nature, which I’m sure would be only returned with puzzling looks, I said that it was funny that he makes his house looks like ’shit’, with all that garbage around… It really was my fault too. I shouldn’t have given him my trash. Oh well, I will remember it for the next time…
As the main road left the Narayan river valley after 40 kms past Narayangadh, it started to go up and down, not much but enough to feel it in my legs and slow me down on uphills. But just past Arung Khola, where I stopped for another ‘cold one’, I discovered that the ‘table pool’ flat plains weren’t as flat as I thought. With only 14-15 kms to Bardaghat where I planned to overnight I saw a sign: STEEP AND WINDING ROAD FOR THE NEXT 14 KMS. So, I just dig my head down, slid down a little in my saddle and started to climb, either seated or standing, just to work different muscles and relieve strain. After about 7.8 kms and a gain of 350 meters I crested a high point. From there it was faaaast downhill to Bardaghat. In the town, after a few friendly pointers by locals, I found the only place to stay for the night, a rather noisy Santosh Lodge. I was glad I loaded some music on my CF cards. A quick shower, a simple dinner, I put in my music on and went to sleep…
Start: Sauraha (6km off H01), Nepal
End: Bardaghat (H01), Nepal
Distance: 97.70 km
Elevation: 770/-800 m
Time: 4′37″
Avg: 21.1 km/h
Total: 5,938.3 km
Riding/Total days: 76/143
November 23rd, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
Nepal |
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I didn’t expect much from today’s jungle walk. But I preferred it instead of just sitting passively atop an elephant, the other most common way of experiencing Chitwan. I woke up early, quickly wolfed down my breakfast and joined my guide Ramji for a walk to the Rafti river and our first leg of the trip: canoeing. We procured my park permit (500 rps) and waited a couple more minutes for some other folks to join us.
The early canoe drift downstream on the river was quiet and rather monotone. The Rafti river is a natural boundary of the Chitwan National Park. The narrow and long gondola-like canoes were made out of soft silkwood trees. Not extremely stable. So, it paid not to move too much around;) The jungle was surrounded by thick morning mist. I could only fathom the wilderness that lied behind riverbanks on my left. We spotted plenty of birds: some rare ducks, one cormoran, two peacocks, a few noisy hornbills, various types of kingfishers and plenty of egrets and herons. We even caught a glimpse of a solitary marsh mugger just ‘dozing’ away near a sandy shore (type of a crocodile related closely to Australian saltwater croc). I asked about the extremely rare Gangetic dolphins but Ramji told me they were none to be found in Chitwan as there was a water dam built downriver that prevented them to swim upstream from India.
After about one hour, we banked on the left side of the river. After short safety instructions where I learned that the most dangerous animals in the park and likely to attack humans were rhinos and sloth bears (rather than a rare Bengali tiger) we entered the thick jungle forest.
We were really lucky because only after walking about 200 meters Ramji saw a male adult one horned Indian rhino (gaida). What a colossal body frame!!! We quickly ran across a small stream to get a closer look. Keeping safe distance, being separated by the side river stream certainly helped, we inched slowly closer. We got maybe within 40 meters before the rhino decided to say the goodbyes to us and huffed into tall elephant grass where we couldn’t see it. It was definitely a highlight of the whole trip. Of the only 2,000 Indian rhinos (a.k.a. gaidas) left in the wild, there were supposedly 372 in Chitwan as of 2005, and still decreasing. Increased pouching in recent years didn’t help much either.
Afterwards, we walked throu8gh variety of jungle habitats, some open patches of either tall dry elephant grasses or short wildly spreading greenish weeds, islands of sal trees or just simply a thick forest. In fact, everything in a jungle grew thickly. We were only able to pass thanks to trails regularly kept open by passing wildlife, mostly tank-like rhinos;) We found some fresh tiger footprints and scat but never saw one. There were plenty of bugs and insects everywhere, although, surprisingly, there weren’t too many mosquitos. But leeches were still a problem this time of the year. The red cottonwood bugs were the most plentiful and photogenic, too. Rhesus macaques and langur (bandar) monkeys were followiing our moves from high above. And despite hearing muntjacs (barking deer) all the time, we didn’t see any.
We saw some great territory marking: tiger’s scat and tree clawmarks, and rhinos ground ‘plowing’ marks and ‘dump’…
At the end, we crossed the Rafti river back to Sauraha right on time to catch a late morning session of elephant bathing. Visitors were encouraged to jump and join in on the fun. Many did, too… I decided just to relax, have a drink and take some funny pictures;)
All in all, the whole trip was worth it. I really liked Ramji who was very professional, knew plants and animals (rattling off not only English but Nepalese and Latin names too). As there we only two of us we could really go off the main trails and walk around. Plus, we caused less noise too and therefore saw much more. He really knew the park well and went extra distance to find wildlife. Unlike some other guides we passed who seemed to just push people along the main ‘big’ trails…
It was a pretty good deal, too: 350 rps for the canoe trip, 550 rps for my guide, in addition to the park entrance fee. And if you’ll ever visit the Chitwan NP, there are also multi-day jungle walks which certainly increases your chances to spot the park’s top predator, the famous Royal Bengal tiger (bagh)…
November 22nd, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
Nepal |
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Just wondering: Why is it when the Internet is fairly fast it cost only 20 rps an hour (i.e. in Kathmandu), as opposed to a really sloooow connection here in Sauraha for which everyone is charged 150 rps??? (Btw, this applies to almost every country I traveled through sofar;)I know the short answer: Scarce competition and/or outdated infrastructure… Hundreds of Internet cafes in Kathmandu, only two in Sauraha. Re. infrastructure there were some good news in today’s press though: India’s telecom companies are waiting for final approval from Nepal gov’t to start building a new fiber-optic line alongside the Mahendra highway. According preliminary estimates, it should lower prices by at least 50%.
November 22nd, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
Nepal |
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Kathmandu Post, originally uploaded by Rich.
The peace accord between the Maoists and major political parties was finally signed today. Congratulations. You can read more about it here:United We Blog
- Nepal Celebrates End of Maoist Insurgency
- THE WAR IS OVER, NEPAL DECLARES!
The Kathmandu Post
- Government, Maoists sign peace agreement
Let’s hope, for all Nepalis, it’ll lead to longterm stability and prosperity both badly needed in today’s Nepal.
November 22nd, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
Nepal |
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In today’s edition of Kathmandu Post I read an interesting article about tourist numbers: “Recovery in tourism sector very slow“. It complained that they were lower this October when compared to the last year (-4.4%) despite of a peaceful settlement of the Maoist insurgency. But what amazed me the most was the often mentioned rant about how only budget minded travelers come, not the “quality” visitors. (The TRC rules I wrote about previously took it one step further in openly discouraging budget travelers from trekking. It’ll take a few months for the officials to realize the idiocy of the policy and scrap it. I’m 100% sure of it.)My point is how do you plan to attract quality visitors, if you don’t care for budget ones? I spoke to a quite a few locals here and many don’t get the idea of traveling because of experience, they only think foreigners visit countries because they want to shop and spend money. Sure, there are plenty of tourists like that but Nepalis need to understand that these visitors also want to be offered quality if they should spend money.
Just a few friendly suggestions: If you really want those quality visitors fix the traffic situation in Thamel, i.e. pedestrian zone wouldn’t be too much to ask for, at least during certain hours. Clean up garbage all over the capital. If you ever walked from Thamel to Swayambhunath temple, you know what I’m talking about… There are no rivers in Kathmandu, only open-air sewage canals. Visas on arrival are great but waiting times at the Tribuhvan airport are ridiculosly long, another common complaint of people flying in.
Sure, the change in political situation and ending of the violence was the first and important step but more needs to be done. Until then only the adventurous and independent ones will come and if you don’t like those what more do you want???
November 22nd, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
Nepal |
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I woke up a bit later than expected, a little past 9:00am, had a breakfast, packed my stuff and was on the road just before 10:00am. Today in the morning was even hazier than yesterday. As soon as I cycled through Mugling, I was glad I stayed in my resort even though it was a bit over my budget (with food and taxes). The town lies on major highway crossroads: left road leads to the Terai and to India, straight ahead one continues via Prithvi highway to Pokhara. As usual such transit places are noisy, crammed with too many people and full of rock-bottom priced hotels that might be good for a stranded backpacker on extremely tight budget but won’t offer me a good night sleep…
My road to the left followed the Trisuli river which later becomes Narayani river (called Gandak in India), a major tributary of the holy Ganges river. Still in the middle hills, it was just barely clinging to steep sidewalls, constantly going up and down and passing through stretches of dusty dirt caused by regular rock avalanches during summer monsoons. About half-way through the H05 highway, the steep hills suddenly opened up and disappeared in hazy distance. I climbed away from the river on my way to Narayangadh, the biggest town in Chitwan.
Same as yesterday, I only stopped for a few cold colas, quick snapshots and a rare inquiry for directions;) In Narayangadh the road turned left and I was cycling on the near ‘table pool’-flat plains of the Terai. I enjoyed it so much that I overshot my turning point to Sauraha, a village right next to the Chitwan NP where almost all independent travelers stay. I did 16-17 kms extra (roundtrip). It didn’t bother me though and I took some nice photos.
Here, in Terai, were plenty of people, traffic and lot more cyclists, too. I could easily hit 28-30 km/h and keep it up. I even had a ’slight’ accident with an undecisive motorbiker. One of my panniers got knocked off a rack, nothing serious though. No harm caused. Back at the proper turno-off, I had 6 more kilometers to cycle and two shaky wooden bridges to cross before I reached Sauraha.
The village was packed with tourist hotels, resorts, guesthouses, a few good restaurants, plenty of souvenir shops and one helluva expensive (and slow at that) Internet Cafe, @150 rps/hour. I decided to check into the Chitwan Resort House as it offered a heavily discounted rate of 150 rps/night (normally around 300 rps). I guess tourist arrivals didn’t match over-supply of lodgings. And supposedly, Chitwan is the most visited place in Nepal, outside of Kathmandu valley. On second thought, I think lot of foreigners are still wary of security issues and the Maoists.
OTOH, I signed up through my lodge for a tomorrow morning’s visit to the park (canoe trip and jungle walk). I might even do the elephant safari later. So, they’ll definitely make some extra money off me anyways…
I need to wake up at 6:00am tomorrow. That’ll be the hardest part of my day;) I hope to have some fun and see some wildlife, too…
Start: Kurintar (H02), Nepal
End: Sauraha (6km off H01), Nepal
Distance: 83.62 km
Elevation: 520/-575 m
Time: 3′57″
Avg: 21.1 km/h
Total: 5,840.6 km
Riding/Total days: 75/141
November 21st, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
Nepal |
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Another quick note: If you ever have to install a new set of Koolstop MTB brake pads, please, don’t do it as I did. After cycling more than 10,000 kms, I have finally realized that the red (salmon) part should point to the back. Stupid me!!! That’s what happens (occasionally) if I go with my ‘gut instincts’ rather than reading instructions (printed right on the brakes, big L and R)…I exchanged the pads on the front, too. It was long overdue as the old set lasted around 7,500 kms. I could feel lot better braking modulation when installed properly. I also re-installed the ones in the back.
But it looked so good the wrong way;) I wonder if anyone did the same mistake?
November 20th, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
Cycling, Equipment, Preparation |
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