Kakani to Chitwan National Park!

After being sick at Kakani I decided to give Daman a miss as there was still a lot of dust around, no visible mountains anywhere. Instead I would head towards Chitwan National Park, the inspiration for the Jungle Book (apparently). In the morning I could still hardly move properly but I packed up everything and got ready to leave. I ate some Sukuti (dried buffalo meat in spices) and managed to keep it down so I at least had some food in me.

The only good photo I got at Kakani. Everything else was just dusty air.

In my foolish non-thinking sick state I decided it was best to head back down the hill and go through Kathmandu as that looked like the most direct easy route. The other direction was more unknown, and possibly unsealed. So I had another day travelling through that horrible place called Kathmandu. It went on forever along the highway too, it wasn't until the Police checkpoint along the road that the buildings really died off but there was still constant traffic. I saw some Germans on a tandem bike that were still smiling, but they had come from the direction of Kathmandu. I guess they were happy to be out.

I rode through this valley west for hours. On my way I was overtaking many trucks, and being waved through many police check points (how many police does Nepal have?). I was still not quite with it with sickness. Eventually there was a turnoff down another valley which headed south towards Chitwan. This valley was far nicer to look at but I didn't take any photos that day, It was getting late in the afternoon and I was being slowed down by buses crawling over little bumps in the road.

Once I got through this new valley I saw some lightning in the distance, and then I felt raindrops. And I don't know why, but I always leave it too late to get my wet weather gear out. I put in the waterproof layer for my jacket but after that the rain stopped. The sky got much darker once I got to Bharatpur though. I needed to get more petrol too so I tried one fuel stop but they didn't have any fuel, and just as I was leaving there some light rain started again. And oddly enough the road was much better to deal with in the rain, all the local motorbikes dived for cover like they hadn't seen rain before and this left hardly anyone on the road.

I found a place to fill up just before the turnoff to Sauraha (the town that services Chitwan) which was heavily guarded by the army. Not sure why it was so secure as none of the others were. I filled up but just as I was about to leave the actual storm started. It was very dark now, like night time dark yet people were still driving around without lights. And the rain and wind had picked up. I had to keep turning the backlight on for the GPS so I didn't miss the turnoff to Sauraha (there are no signs here). After dodging mysterious unlit objects (buses or trucks) that moved past a black background I managed to turn down the road to Sauraha.

Along this road there were a lot of tractors with lights up high so I couldn't see anything, at one point I stopped to let one past, but they stopped right infront of me and kept their lights aimed at my helmet. I risked falling into a massive ditch by the side of the road I couldn't see and went around.

Eventually this road ended up going through a large field (from all I could see in the dark) and then I noticed that there was lightning very close now... Being on an object mostly made out of metal I thought this was not the best place to be so I pushed in through the hail and wind, trying to see the road through the very dark rain ahead. Eventually I saw a tree, which is not a smart place to be in a storm, but next to it was a small shop which had a little overhang for me to get over to. I parked there and waited for the storm to die down and some of the sunlight to come back.

I figured I did not want to be trying to look for accomodation in this weather, so I picked one that sounded good out of the Lonely Planet and gave them a call. They hesitated when they said they had a room, but they had one, and that's all I needed. Once the rain died down some more (it was still very heavy) I headed in the direction of the Chitwan Gaida Lodge. Once I got there they showed me to the room, and then told me that they had three people coming that night and only one room left. Whoever got there first would get the room and the others would be put in a place down the road. I only called because I didn't want that to happen, but I did get the room, who knows what happened to the others.

Finally I made it through that storm, still feeling slightly unwell too!

The next day they of course started trying to sell one of the tours they offer, I told them I'd like to do a full day jeep tour to see more of the park and then maybe do another tour after that, and that I'd rather share the cost of a full day tour with others ($100 by myself!). So for 5 days I wandered around Sauraha, eating, looking across the river, watching the nightly thunderstorms, and watching my blood pressure go dangerously low and stupidly high, all while waiting for other people to want to do a full day tour. I gave up waiting and asked to do a half day tour where they throw you in the back of a jeep with several other random people. But later that day others had arrived who wanted to do the full day, Success!

We were told to order breakfast the previous night, have it at 6:30am and we'd leave by 7am. But in the middle of the night a VERY big storm hit. The storms here have a lot of lightning with flashes every second and a constant rumble of thunder. This one however was very windy and the lightning was so frequent it was almost stayed light outside. So after breakfast the next morning they told me they they had to wait until they were given the all clear by the national park. That wasn't until 8am, and then we were off!

The couple who were doing the jeep tour with me were from Australia, but very much into their birds. So for most of the morning we stopped to look at many birds, which are OK, but I was there for the rhino (and tiger).

Bird.

Monkey.

Peacock.

Strangled.

This is what we were travelling through most of the morning.

Bird.

Crocodile. 

At this lake there was a tower to climb up, so we went up and in the distance we could see one rhino! Very far away, but it was there!

Tiger footprints.

While driving through the Sal forests someone happened to look behind the jeep and saw a small black shape moving across the road. We turned round and tried to catch up, which is where we saw this:

A Sloth Bear.

The Sloth Bear is one of the more rare sightings in the park (along with tigers). This one looked like it was injured, it really didn't like us following it. After that we went further down the road to where there was a small waterhole and a tower overlooking it. We went up the tower and waited in silence for 15 minutes because this was a good spot for tigers. But today there were none. So we pushed on a little further into the forest, up a small track to where we were going to have lunch, but instead we found this:

A rhino!

It was facing the other direction at first, then noticed us, and wasn't too happy. The driver of the jeep had tried to get a bit closer to it but then the rhino turned and started to charge, to which the guide said "it's charging! get to the jeep!" so that's where I went. But the guide and one other person had stayed by the river as the rhino stopped. Oh well. I think I'll stay in this tiny non-protective jeep.

After that we headed to another spot, hopefully away from any other large animals.

This is where we ate lunch.

When the jeep stopped the guide told us to stay in it, and he scouted around to check for any dangerous animals. Once we got the all clear we were out and started to eat lunch. The guide was telling us that at this spot he has seen a family of rhinos in the river a few times. Just not today.

After lunch we head out again, I was totally lost because I kept forgetting the sun is in the South in this hemisphere. We ended up in more grasslands though. There were more rhinos out here, this is what they looked like though:

Hiding in the grass.

In total we saw 7 rhinos. We didn't see any elsewhere in the park. A tour came back the day after and they had seen about 25.

Eagle.

We stopped by another lake which was supposed to be good for tiger spotting.

Lake.

Bug.

More lake.

Eagles nest in the tall tree.

But again, no tigers. We did see the army doing a patrol though here looking for poachers. Then it was a lonnnnnnggg bumpy drive somewhere, nothing to see for about an hour, not even any birds. We ended up back in the grasslands again:

Countryside like this.

Here we saw some domestic elephants, they're used by the army for some patrols.

Muddy road.

We went down a small muddy road to have a look, which is where the jeep got stuck. After trying to rock back and forth to get it out the driver eventually put it in 4wd, but this still didn't help. We had to all get out, and help lift it across to a dry part of the track. This got it out of that spot, but then we had to push it again when it got stuck in the next muddy spot.

On the way out some Bison were spotted off in the distance. I've no idea if I was looking at them through the binoculars or if it was just a tree stump. The others were pretty confident they were looking at five bison though.

More mud.

More grass, Bison were somewhere in there.

Spotted deer.

The road just next to the river.

Jeep parking.

Sauraha on the other side of the river.

Incoming storm? It didn't arrive that night :(

Waiting for our ride across.

And that was it for the national park! I stayed another day to get some laundry done, and also to look at the wildlife display which was next door to the the place I was staying. Some very strange stuff in there: rhino and elephant fetuses, various skulls, bones, skin, and genitalia...

My bike was parked at the guesthouse for a week, and during the week I saw people sitting on it (and twisting the throttle grip more so it's even looser now) and just generally looking at it all the time. Mostly it was the staff of the place I was staying. Most days I just check that everything is still attached, but the night before I left I checked the fuel to see if it was all there and it was still full. The next morning it was mostly gone... Someone had taken 15L of fuel from my bike in the night. I had just enough to get to the armed petrol station again, I think the only reason why there was some left was because they had no more room to take it. The worst part was they left it on reserve. I make a habit of checking before I get on the bike but if I hadn't I would have run out a lot sooner and then not have any reserve. First time that has happened this entire trip, or even when it was back in Melbourne for a year. The cap doesn't lock, but then it's very easy to take the fuel hose off the tap and drain it out that way. I usually try and leave it so I fill up the next time I ride it, but it's not so east in Nepal when I don't know when I'm going to get fuel.

It's rapidly adding up that Nepal has a high concentration of Jerks...

More strange stories from Nepal (Part 1?)

Electricity

Electricity is fair game to anyone here. It's off half the time but you don't need to be licensed to do anything. Just be alive. Briefly.

Here in K-Too bar (which if you're looking for a place to watch the Formula 1, they will show it) we see a guy wiring the plugs of a DVD player and stereo system together so they can use the one powerpoint.

I looked outside at the mess of wires running through the street and wondered how much of it was actually professionally installed.

In the guesthouse I was staying at there are a set of solar powered lights so you can still see when the power is off. The one in my room wasn't working so someone came up to fix it.

I took this while he was out of the room actually turning off the circut...

The bits of wire there? The two pairs were joined with electrical tape. He re-wrapped them again and it all started working. After taking out the board of switches in the wall first however, which had mains to it (if it was on).

It was a concrete building but the only escape was through the front door, which was locked at night. Lucky no fires while I was there though.

Facebook

Facebook? What's this place?

Oh it's the facebook restaurant...

This wasn't some back street either. This is one of the main north-south roads through Kathmandu. The US embassy is not far from here (also a few other places that warn you not to take photos). All the staff inside wore the facebook-blue shirts with the logos on too. Moderately cheap food though, they probably sell my data to others to keep the costs down too (just like the real facebook!).

Hot Water

Found this in the bathroom of the Panarama View Hotel. Finally a place with decent hot water. This is how they did it:

Yup. Rusting gas bottle under the shower which dripped over it constantly. There was a maze of taps you had to turn on or off or something just to get water out. The water flow wasn't quite fast enough to keep the water temperature below boiling either. Still, it was hot.


Black Market Petrol

Before I got to Kakani I had the mistaken impression that it would be a large enough place to find fuel at. At least somewhere between the Kathmandu Ring Road and Kakani. Well I was wrong. My plan to fill up as late as possible so I could go as far as I could failed. When I got to the top I realised I had about 2L left, that could possibly get me to the bottom (the bike was still burning through it quickly however). To be safe I asked the people at the guesthouse where I could get fuel but they said no where up there as the police had cracked down on them selling it. But in another town the police had actuallly pointed me in the direction of shops selling fuel. Strange arbitrary rules

One of the people at the guesthouse had phoned their brother and they mentioned that it was still possible to get it in Kakani, but just watch for police...

Right. So I went down to the shops, pulled up, and grandly gestured to the fuel tank as if asking for fuel. One guy nodded. I walked up to the shop and pretended to browse. Under the counter he started to fill up four 1L water bottles with my illegal fuel. I bought some other items just to throw off any police who were watching. Once he was done filling I paid and he handed me my four bottles in a black plastic bag, then told me to fill up down the road.

And that I did.

After I got to Kathmandu I had to ride about 2km into it to find any fuel... There just wasn't any near the road north-east. Stupid city. I'm never going there again!

A stop for a drink

After finding petrol in Kathmandu I headed back up the hill at high speed, passing trucks and flying through police check points.

About halfway up I felt a bit thirsty, thought I might stop for a drink somewhere.

This place looks OK... what do they have.

Hmm. Maybe I'll stick to Fanta or Sprite. Or just a plain Jambo.

This was one of the suspected places that gave me food poisoning too. I think I blame this one. I had Aloo Jeera here (potato+spices) and I was the only one there. The other candidate is the View Himalaya Resort but they did have a lot of people eating there.

The Arniko Highway

I've finally been able to upload my photos from my first venture out of Kathmandu. I've been sick (again) for the past few days with food poisoning but the phone coverage where I was staying was dodgy so I still couldn't upload them even though I had plenty of time to do it.

So, my story of the Arniko Highway:

After I obtained my Indian visa I looked at all my belongs on the floor of my room and wondered how all of that crap will fit on my bike again. The bike has been luggage free for almost a month now while it was waiting for shipping in Bangkok and when it was waiting for me to be not-sick in Kathmandu. I wasted an extra day before I set off from Kathmandu hoping to get a decent nights sleep before heading out into that traffic again. Sleep failed of course. At 11pm everything is slient, but between 2am and 5am all the stray dogs start howling, and then at 5am the bells for the holy hindu tree infront of the guesthouse start ringing. Then the horns. THE HORNS.

My first trip out of Kathmandu was to head to the China/Tibet boarder just to have a look and I had hoped to stand on the friendship bridge between the two countries. I decided to head to Tatopani which had a moderate writeup in the Lonely Planet guide, it was the next town down from the border (but they kind of all blur together out that way).

As usual I hit a delay when trying to leave.

From the rooftop of the guesthouse some mornings you could hear lots of shouting/chants going on. I found out later that these were the almost daily protests in Kathmandu. I had only seen one and it was a long line of people holding signs and dressed in orange walking single file along one of the major roads. No idea what that one was about. Todays protest was about fuel prices which had gone from 116r/L to 120r/L that day. Welcome to the rest of the world Nepal (except Malaysia). I'm not sure if it's true or not but one of the Nepali people had told me that the protesters were mainly students and were paid to create some unrest (but I won't mention who paid them). This was a delay of a couple of hours while they blocked the road somewhere, it was very surreal to have daylight outside and no constant horn noise. This delayed me by delaying the driver of the car who had parked my bike in that morning.

After the driver arrived it was time to pack up everything and head out. Only a couple of hours lost.

Back in Kathmandu traffic again. Bikes, cars and buses are everywhere but strangely once you're part of it it doesn't seem as crazy when watching it as a pedestrian. I did have a lot of training in South East Asia but it's still an order of magnitude crazier here. The thing I noticed most is the absense of horns in moving traffic, they're still there, but far less frequent then you would imagine. I got lost a few times because I missed the turn the GPS was warning me about, but thankfully they threw in a triangular roundabout with a traffic policeman at each corner to direct traffic which made it much easier to head in the right direction. It was very slow going on some of the roads, and people just wandering through traffic everywhere, sometimes even a cow. People don't take a gap to merge or cross traffic either, they just nudge forward into the lane of moving traffic until someone is to chicken to pass (often the person right behind me, pansies).

Once you're out of the Kathmandu ring road traffic seems to drop off a lot. There were lots of police about on the main highway east, mostly infront of large groups of young people on bikes holding some sort of flag at some petrol stations. I guess the protest was possibly still ongoing. When the road starts to climb the hills there's less traffic again but you have to watch for high speed busses taking up the whole road. Not that I had much of a problem because the roads are wide and traffic is light, I didn't have too much of an issue anywhere all the way up to the border. My only problems were waiting for a gap when overtaking a slow bus, but then I'd be trapped beside a line of people making a gap to pass by honking their horn and making the traffic from the other direction get out of the way. Oh and coming round a corner and finding an overturned bus, luckily nothing was coming the other way.

My bike in the way.

The dusty view over the edge.

Once I passed over the bridge at Dhulikhel the scenery changed again. There's a short climb and then down the other side of the mountain the road starts to run along the Bhote Koshi river all the way to the border. I was finally riding through the valleys that were like the pictures I had been looking at two years ago when planning this trip!

After the turnoff to Jiri (which is the start of the trek to Everest) the road starts to show signs of past landslides. Busses seem to crawl over the rocks, I had no problems tackling it at high speed. A lot of the time the road is at the level of the river. It starts to climb a lot higher closer to Tatopani and then drops down again.

One of the little flats next to the river. Play spot the bike!

Looking downstream from the same spot. Those mountains are a lot taller than they look here.

This is where this picture goes. It's my favourite.

Along the way you pass the Borderlands Resort and The Last Resort, two adventure holiday places in Nepal. The Last Resort has bunjee jumping from it's bridge 400m above the river. I skipped both those places of course!

That's the bridge you jump off...

Once I got to Tatopani I looked around for somewhere to stay. The lonely planet mentioned a few spots but had a writeup on a place called "My Family Guesthouse". I picked that one but paid extra over the cheaper options along the road. I ended up paying 800r for the night and had views over the river and Tibet on the other side. And then later that night excellent views of the lightning hitting the hills and a good spot to hear the thunder echoing up the valley. Totally worth it. The problem was that everything in the bathroom leaked. Half of the toilet flush ended up on the floor because it wasn't sealed to the bowl properly, and the sink leaked from the tap, and from the drain. All asian bathrooms must be designed to be constantly wet it seems.

View out my window

Boarding school below.

Some of the new buildings up river.

Tatopani. I'm standing on a landslide!

The landslide! You can see where it came from... I'm sure it wiped out a few houses.

Trucks everywhere, waiting to cross the border.

Lightning!

MORE LIGHTNING!

WABAM!

ooooh lightning!

The river was much louder than I thought it would be during the night, it was still much better than being woken up to bells or horns, or even the airport train in Bangkok. Finally a decent sleep!

Morning time.

In the morning I packed up and headed the extra 4km up to the Tibet border to have a look, still thinking I could stand on the friendship bridge. I was stopped right outside the immigration office where there were a lot of poeple standing around saying I could not go further. I had to park my bike just a little bit down the hill. I had another discussion with another group of people and they said it would be ok to go up to the customs gate, but no further, and NO PHOTOS. I could take one from where I parked my bike, but nothing of the Chinese side. Not so friendship bridge it seems. I wandered up to the gate, had a look over the edge but all I could see was the road climbing the hill on the Chinese side and various immigration and customs sheds they had. Nowhere could I see any bridge. I noticed some steps leading up to a temple, I walked up them a way but still it was the same view, just some buildings and a bit of Tibet.

On my way back down the steps however I noticed that there was a bit of commotion at the customs gate. Some lady had started shouting at the armed guards. I think she had a kid with her. There was a bit of shuffling and the lady kept pushing the guards. They eventually took her to the side of the road and there was more shoving. At this point at the bottom of the steps I saw someone who was watching this, and then looking up at me. I figured I should probably move away from staring at what's going on and head back down to my bike. Once I got to the bottom of the steps the guy I had noticed said hello and then walked by me all the way back to the immigration office where he said "ok you can go now". Ah, I see. I was being watched. Probably to make sure I didn't take any photos of China, and especially not of what was going on at the customs gate.

While I had walked up to the gate, someone had parked behind my bike so I couldn't get out... This seems to happen a lot. After getting all my gear on and trying not to look too closely at the guy who had followed me I asked someone to help move it out of the way. A lot of shuffling of bikes later I was free! And not arrested!

Closer to Tatopani I got my camera out again and took some photos.

That's as close as I'm taking a photo of the crossing... You can still see China/Tibet on the left.

Looking up towards the crossing...

A Tibetan waterfall.

Looking down towards Tatopani.

I also started the GoPro recording too, I wasn't going to stop a lot while it was going. This of course lead to the previous post about recovering video. It was very important to get it back becuase I wasn't taking photos so often.

Further down the road.

More bike in the way.

Notice all the stuff growing on the underside of the rocks on the cliff? I didn't while I was there, only when looking athe photo again.

I was also running pretty low on petrol. On the way up I noticed a lot of places were shut and I knew there was a shortage (but, Nepal seems to be in a permanant state of shortage). Eventually, after running into reserve I stopped in a town that I thought might have petrol but I couldn't see a pump anywhere. I stopped and asked one of the police where to get petrol, and they pointed down the road. So off I set looking for petrol, but ended up crossing the bridge to the other side without seeing any. I stopped at another place on the other side of the river and asked again, they pointed back over the river. Right, so it was somewhere between the police and the end of the bridge. On my way back through I still notice no pumps, but then I saw it! It was all in 1L plastic water bottles that were on the road in front of most of the shops on this side of the river! This is why I have an extra fuel filter!

I stopped at one shop randomly and asked how much they were, 140r was the reply. Ok, I see they have a lot, and I'm not sure how much I'll see on the road back to Kathmandu so I said I'll take 10. She starts emptying them into my tank and I note that they're not quite filled all the way, probably 900mL rather than 1L. After the 10th one is emptied in I ask how much was the total, and the reply this time was 1500r... But 10 x 140 is not 1500! And neither is 0.9 x 140. I pay anyway. Again the Nepali people ripping me off every chance they get. I've just been told this is worse in India, excellent. Also the fuel was very bad quality too. And apparently they mix it with something else, not sure what but I ran through a lot of it much quicker than I should have.

Then it was off to Dhulikhel. I rode through the town and didn't see the place I was looking for, so I headed for the more expensive place up a dirt road to the top of a hill. My bike is jetted all wrong for this alitiude (only 1700m so far) and with the bad fuel it kept stalling every time there was no throttle and the clutch was in. About 15 starts up this 1km stretch I managed to make it to the Panorama View Hotel. They tried to give me a room for 1200r with breakfast, but we got it down to 800r with no breakfast, not like I was going to spend 400r on breakfast anyway. I did make up for it with other meals though. It was still dusty and not much visibility there until later in the afternoon when a big thunderstorm came through. This blew away all the dust and I could see the Himalayas! Not quite down to Everest, but close! There were a couple of hours until sunset where the mountains were visible and I think that entire time I was just looking out at them or watching lightning starting fires on the nearby hills.

It was quite peaceful up there so I stayed an extra night, but I didn't see any more mountains.

Mountains! It was very dark at this point, but you could make out the snow with your eyes, not in the photo though.

Some of the hills heading west. I say hills now, even though all of them would be close to the height of Mt. Kosciuszko. 

When I get some free wireless I'll upload videos of riding in Kathmandu, and though the valleys, and up other mountains.