Chitwan memories

Heath has written beautifully and succinctly about Chitwan, but I have a few memories I'd like to share. Prior to our 'jungle safari walk' in the Sal forest, the safety directions given were about our line up. For safety reasons we were instructed to walk with the guide at the beginning of our line, and the assistant guide at the rear. It was like a being in a tiger tourist sandwich!

We observed an incredible amount of birds in our 6 hour walk. Our young guide, Nabin, was particularly interested in the avian species, bringing along a superior pair of binoculars and the Chitwan bird book to share. On the river there were hoards (flocks?) of large beige 'love ducks' migrating from Siberia. It was said that they mate for life, and if one of the pair dies, the other will soon follow suit. There were black cormorants similar to ours, as well as egrets, black ibis, sandpipers and pond herons, which are short chubby brown birds. We spotted two kinds of kingfishers; the pied kingfishers are black and white while the smaller iridescent blue ones with shiny red on their breasts are more common.

In the trees of the sal forest we spotted jungle fowl (our joke was calling them chickens of the jungle or feral hens), peacocks, eagles,crows and black headed yellow orioles. There were some smaller songbirds called shrikes and red vented bulbuls. We spotted both the pied hornbill and the great hornbill. Chitwan park is home to beautiful black birds called drongos. We spotted many common long tailed drongos and Nabin was especially ecstatic to see the racket tailed drongos.

At the tower that we spent the fitful night on the porch at, we saw many of these birds, as well as small bats swooping in for the tiny mosquitoes at dusk. The porch had a spiral staircase reaching the ground, where the bathroom was. The guides scared us by telling stories of sloth bears climbing up, and tigers prowling below. There were no inner stairs, so we were advised before retiring to waken a guide if we wanted to visit the toilet in the night. Of course Raven and I needed to use it before dawn, and while the probability of a tiger pouncing on us was probably pretty slim, we were too scared to take the chance! I felt slightly bad waking the guide up, especially since they had a later night than us while drinking raksi in their lower room!

I visited the museum next to the government elephant place. I wasn't sure what to expect. The room was full of local animals in various sized containers of formaldehyde, from crocodiles to hippo fetuses to small rodents. Their was also an impressive array of animal 'members'. Why these were kept in separate containers, with the rest of the body beats me!

Look at the size of the rhino poop!

Lumbini was also a nice place to bird watch. They have a heron sanctuary in the area. One day at about 4pm as I was walking back to the monastery after sightseeing, I had spotted kites (like falcons) above a field, then noticed a large black bird being chased through a treed area by black crows. As it flew away I wondered what kind of bird could have bat like wings. When I told Heath about it- he said it must have been a fruit bat. Too cool.