Its been a while since my last post, I know.  But we have also had a busy week or so.  I will start with the first part of our trip.  The day after Maggie's birthday we left for Chitwan, a Nepali national park.  We all loaded onto one bus.  We had 40 seats for 50 people.  Luckily a number of the kids are small enough to sit on laps and double up in seats, but it was still a tight fit.  As is customary in Nepal, it took about an hour to get more than a mile away from the house.  We made a few stops, filling up on gas, trying to pick up strangers, and bathroom breaks... because none of this could have been done before they got to the house.  We eventually did get on our way and about 14 hours later we arrived at the resort in Chitwan.  It was dark and everyone was hungry.  I was asked to hold a boys hand who has cerebral palsy when we got off the bus.  This wasn't so strange a thing to be asked but then he promptly  dropped trow and began peeing right outside the bus door.

We all went into the dining room where the kids were seated and served dal baht.  Adults ate next.  We then split everyone up into small groups and sent them to bed.  The rooms were decent enough but small.  We had four adults and two beds.  We made due.  One volunteer got his own bed, one slept on the floor and the other two shared the other bed.  We woke up early the next morning and drove to the park after breakfast where we were to ride elephants.  I was very excited about this.  I used to love Dumbo.  It was pretty cool seeing people coming and going on elephants as we waited in line.  Some of them were decorated in paint or tika.  We all loaded up on elephants in groups for 4 to 6.  The elephants walked carefully down a steep bank and waded across the river.  Then through some grass and into the jungle.  There were winding paths that weaved and split and cris crossed through the jungle.  We all split up and went different directions and then out of nowhere another group on their elephant would emerge from the thick vegetation.  The children were louder than the elephants for the most part.  Otherwise you might not have had any idea they were even there.  Apparently the monkeys were hiding that morning and tigers are rarely seen but we did see wild hen, peacock, two different kinds of deer, which are not spooked by the sight of a human by the way, and several other birds.  Luckily I did see some monkeys on the drive in, hanging out by the side of the road.

Our guide wouldn't tell us the name of our elephant because he is playful and gets excited at the sound of its own name.  The guide said "he" but I think it was actually a female elephant, it wasn't quite big enough for a male.  Our ride was about an hour long and was lots of fun.  When we got back we bought several bananas for the kids to feed the elephants.  They got to pet its trunk and see it up close from a different view.  We returned to the hotels for some lunch and to relax for a little then decided to take a crocodile tour.  We loaded into some very small boats carved from tree trunks and set off down a very still river.  I think our boat had too many larger people in it because when I looked over the side we had about 2 inches of dry boat.  I had to remind the boys to keep all hands, feet, heads and bodies in the boats at all times.  Maggie made a very strong point of scaring the kids out of touching the water.  The first person to break that rule was one of the uncles who reminds me of Tom Hanks' character in Big.  He is a child trapped in a man's body.  The first one in the boat and he broke the rules before anyone else even stepped foot in a boat.  The second one to break the rules was his son who sat directly in front of me.  His excuse was he just wanted to touch the water.  He clearly takes after his father.

Don't you do it Buhkta...

We did end up seeing several crocs.  I only saw two on land but some of the kids claimed to see one or two more, at least one of them in the river.  One boat had to stop along the way to let some kids out to go to the bathroom.  This was of course about only 5 minutes away from the end of the tour.  They got out and climbed ashore into some very tall grass.  It didn't seem very safe but by the time any of us saw what was going on it was too late.  We got to the end of the tour with all 33 kids and 132 limbs (to save some of you the time, thats 4 limbs per kid).  Then we walked over to where they kept some more elephants.  There they had some much larger males chained up to large posts.  Unfortunately they did not look too happy.  It was kind of unsettling to see how they were kept.  Supposedly the elephants are capable of breaking their chains if they were muster up the motivation.  There was a baby elephant too, which was fenced in with its mother.  The baby kept trying to climb over or though the fence while its mother stood in the middle chained up.  Freeing it would have been fun and made for a good blog post but writing it from a Nepali prison cell might've made that difficult.

The male elephant

We also visited a so called museum.  It was a lot more like a dead zoo.  It was two rooms of display cases and taxidermy animals.  Many of the display cases contained animal reproductive organs and fetuses.  I'm just glad it was in the middle of the day because it was kind of horrifying.  Unless you have some strange need to see some skulls and preserved animal naughty bits I'll spare you the pictures.  I took none of the fetuses... so don't ask. After we left that terrific experience we walked down the road a little to where a baby rhinoceros was standing.  They brought it over to the compound because it had been attacked by a tiger.  There was a small injury on its snout (is that what you call it?)  but it seemed more scared by the large crowd of people standing around it.  I'm curious how it survived a tiger attack because it was not very big.  That was pretty cool but the more entertaining thing was the Chinese tourist.  Couldn't have been more touristy.

Always with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth

Next to the Sunset River right at sunset

Next part of the vacation is coming soon.

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