Catching up on our sleep at delhi airport

Last night, we had the chance to witness a part of the celebration of the dawali festival. The house fronts were decorated with colourful paintings and kids were going from door to door singing and getting a few ruppees.
We stayed in town in a disco until the police came and cleared the dancefloor shortly after midnight, because of governmental curfew.... The night was short since we were up again at 6.30 to make it to the airport. After more than 4 hours delay we left Kathmandu... That's when we finally found some time to catch up in our sleep since we have about 12 hours waiting time till our flight to Kuwait.

Down to the Nepalese Jungle

After our trekking experience and the insight into temples and architecture, we decided to see another face of Nepal and travel to the jungle. Our drive to the Chitwan National Park at the border with India is another 7 hours from Kathmandu. We arrive in a complete different world far from the snowy mountains and traffic jams of Kathmandu where houses are mainly made of mud and straw.

The lodge where we are staying is directly on the river side and looking into the park which brings a great relief from the hectic of Kathmandu.

Our first excursion is to an elephant breeding center, but the conditions in which the elephants are kept are not the best one could think of.

Elephant ride is on the program for the first half of the second day, and although it is very touristy, we manage to spot some wild animals including some rhinos in their natural environment.





After the walks, the elephants get their daily wash in the river just outside our lodge.



Our last excursion starts with a canoe tour followed by a walk in the jungle.

Our guide "Schuhman" warns us, we may not see any animal and it's not only for fun: each year a few people die including some tourists. Yet, as protection, he only carries a stick and gives us a few tips:

a) if we see a Rhino, climb a tree and if you cannot climb, hide behind the tree
b) Sloth bear, stay together in the group, since the bear will not charge on the group
c) Tiger: well, there's not much to do here, the tiger just chooses its prey...

On these reassuring words we start our walk and we are lucky enough to spot a sloth bear for a few seconds.


Here our last drink watching the sunset, before returning to Kathmandu.

Back to civilisation

After our 10 hour drive back to Kathmandu in jeep without any suspension, we are invited to Sujit's place in Dhulikel, about 1.5 hour from Katmandu with public transportation (40c ride by the way). But before the party starts, Sujit has invited me to make a presentation in his University which is about 1km from his house.

The University and his house are only separated by some rice fields almost ready to harvesting at that time of the year.

After dressing Yvonne with traditional clothes for the evening, we enjoy fantastic food including a famous chilly Chicken, the best we've ever had. And of course some dancing to Nepalese music.

The next day, we do a bit of cultural site seeing with the town of Bhaktapur, on the way back to Kathmandu. It's an old town showing traditional architecture.







Back to Katmandu, we take an afternoon to visit the famous "monkey temple", a Hindu temple on a hill just outside of town. Make sure you're not afraid of monkeys since there are a LOT of them and they tend to be pretty cheeky, especially if you have any kind on food in your hands, they wont hesitate to get it from you.

Reaching our summit at 4985m

Our third walking day starts under the sun, and since we are above the forest we have a great view on the 6000m and 7000m peaks around us. From the Langtang village we follow some budhist pilgrim path with ancient engraved stones.

We also start to see our target for tomorrow: it's the brown summit on the left of this picture, just below 5000m.

Around lunchtime, we reach our base camp "Kiangin Gompa" at 3900 where we'll spend the following 2 nights.


Our first day here gives up enough time to climb up to 2 summits at 4300m and 4600m respectively in order to aclimatise for the next day's walk.

Tonight is going to be an early night at 8pm since we are exhausted from the first summit and we'll have to get up at 5am the next day for the main summit. We enjoy a last cup of milk tea around the wood stove.

Just after 6.30am and our daily portion of cheese pasta, we start our walk under the shadow of the mountain.

Our first obstacles is a half frozen river which we have to cross.

We quickly reach the sunny side of the mountain under a blue sky as the day before. Yet the hike up is not as smooth as yesterday, and some of us start suffer from altitude sickness about half way up the mountain in spite of the aclimatisation.

The last couple of hundred of meters are really hard but yet the view on all the sunny peaks was really worth it.
Our lunch break on top of the mountain just made our symptoms worse so that the way down will not be enjoyable for most of us.