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Thursday : sunny
Today we had a lot to do, first up after breakfast we hopped in the back of the ute and went for an elephant ride. The setup isn't as good as Thailand's two seater chair, it was a four seater basket and it wasn't the comfiest 1.5hr ride, but the elephants here are so much bigger. I wonder how big the african elephants are. It was still great fun, we got to see two more rhinos, these two were keeping cool in the water like the two yesterday, but more of their body's were showing. We traveled through creeks and elephant tall grass, and bush bashed through dense forests. In the forests is where we saw a few different types of deer also, some of the bucks had huge antlers.
When the ride finished, the elephants had their baskets removed and didn't have to do anymore walking until late afternoon. Instead they made their way over to the bathing area for their daily scrub, and we followed.
The elephant bathing was so much fun, were rode our elephant bare back into the water and she sprayed us with her trunk and threw us off her back by rolling over on her side into the water. Then she threw us back up onto her back with her trunk and continued to spray us. Kim lost her sunnies during the one sided water fight, but she said it was so worth it.
It was good to see the elephants being looked after and enjoying themselves in the water, they loved it. Sure they get a bit of a rough whack now and then out when their working but their big, they can take it. They really got a good scrubbing every inch on their body got a once over, I found out that elephants have ticklish feet when I washed one elephants foot it would pull away and splash me. They are truly amazing animals, they're just awesome I want one U love em.
After our soaking we went back to the resort got changed and had some lunch. Then we had a couple hours of free time, I just went back to our room to read and try to have a rest, pretty tired today, I still have no voice although it is better than yesterday.
At 3pm we went for a canoe ride. The canoe had been carved out of a whole tree, pretty cool. Very unstable though, thought I was going to lose everything in the drink a few times. It was a nice smooth relaxing trip down the river.(when I wasn't worried about falling into the water). We got to see another big rhino this time it was out of the water. Weird looking things with all their skin folds, they sure look like they could cause some damage at full speed. We saw a mother elephant and her baby too, heaps of crocs soaking up the arvo sun, some monkeys fooling around up in the tree tops. Lots of big birds too, we did see some bright blue kingfishers which standout in amongst the dirt and brown grass.
We pulled up on the banks of the Rapti river and this was the start of jungle walk. We got our danger brief, this was just telling us what to do if we encounter certain wild animals i,e rhino, tigers, bears, elephants. Before heading into the jungle we got to see the rarer of the two species of crocodile in Chitwan, the Gharial croc it's the long snouted one, and in 2003 there were only 38 wild ones.... very lucky.
The walk was very quiet, it went for almost 2hrs. We got to see dear, monkeys and wild bore, no tigers or the wild male elephants unfortunately. Need to go deeper into the bush for those I think. We were lucky to see those animals it was pretty thick scrub, we could hear a lot of monkeys and rustling bushes from things running away probably.
The walk led us to the elephant breeding centre, this is where they have a bunch of female elephants in stables, and they try to attract the wild males to come in and do their business. It seems to work their were 6 young elephants there, the oldest being 5yrs, and they youngest was 4months, one elephant is pregnant too. The young one was so funny, he was running around under all the other elephants and climbing up the fences. We got to see the 4yr old Twin elephants too, it's only the second time in the world that an elephant has given birth to twins in captivity. Our guide Prakaash was very good, he was full of info on the elephants.
Our big day was coming to an end, we just had one more stop, it was at another Tharu village. We went to a different one yesterday, but we were with 3 other people today, and they haven't done their village walk, so we went with them today. It was a bit larger this village, we went into a display hut and saw all types of tools and musical instruments.
It got dark really quick today, we were still at the village when the sun went down. We left and made our way back to the resort for dinner and then more movie watching, terminator salvation was on ohh yeah!
Well tomorrow we catch the bus back to Kathmandu, and that's it for the jungle. We didn't get to see our tigers but we were very lucky to see the animals we did. Back at the breeding centre I was talking to a bunch off people and they didn't get to see any crocs or rhinos. Maybe we had a better guide and knew where to go.
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