Onto Chitwan

Sauraha, Nepal

Our final day on the trek! Banana pancake and boiled eggs for breakfast, carbs and protein. Plus my stomach is finally better, so I’m enjoying food again! Then downhill for a couple of hours. Mostly stone steps, but they were even and dry for the most part. Just a couple of places where it was loose stones, but we were at the road, where the bus was waiting, in no time. Back to the Middle Way hotel where we stayed the night previously. Our CEO had organised a couple of rooms for us to shower and unpack our duffels into our packs and then have lunch. My clothes were still damp from sweat, my towel not dry from showering, so they are stuffed in the bottom of my pack for washing at the next stop. I wandered along the shops for a bit, and had lunch at a restaurant along the main strip, caught up on wifi and chowed down on ham, pineapple and mushroom pizza and fresh orange juice. Then 5 hour bus ride to Chitwan. I had been told by a couple on the last trip that the roads in a Nepal were awful. They weren’t wrong. You can barely read because of the jolting of the bus. And it’s not just the main cities or the back roads. Every single road is potholed and eroded and disappears into gravel in parts. We arrive at 6pm for an Indian buffet dinner. I went to bed fairly early, not feeling the best. The next morning, I was not feeling great, so I stayed in my room instead of doing the activities. Lunch and then a jeep safari through the national park. The journey there was so rocky, bouncing around in the minibus. The jeeps for the safari were fancy, graduated seating, open top, and good suspension. We saw monkeys, spotted deer and a rhino. We headed back as the sun was setting, and stopped at a restaurant specialising in Indian for dinner. It was pretty good – paneer tikka masala and cheese garlic naan. I was so full. As we were finishing dinner, our CEO was trying to hurry us along to see a cultural performance by the Terai people. It was supposed to be held near the restaurant, but instead, we watched it at the hotel, along with another tour group. They did some dances with clapping sticks, and longer ones, fire twirling, and drums with peacock feathers attached. After that, we sat in lounge chairs chatting over drinks.