Today marked the end of the Intrepid tour that I have been following for the past two weeks. It was a muted affair, as I woke up to see the group off, remaining in Kathmandu for the next 10 days before my GVI placement starts on the 17th.
It’s been a hectic first few days. With the tour in general, its crammed a lot into very little time that we have, sacrificing certain things, one of which is my beloved sleep, but this has been a good thing, even if I am at my worst without some kip. Since my last article, I have been in Chitwan National Park, south Nepal. That involved a 2 day trek in the wilderness trying to spot Rhino’s, sloth bears, and Bengal tigers. We didn’t see a single thing past the first 5 minutes of the trek. This wasn’t helped by the fact that we mainly walked on tracked roads as opposed to through the bush. I didn’t complain- the jungle wasn’t made for a city boy like me. I didn’t expect pavements, but even requesting a personal guide called Nehtaj providing shade and an electric fan was apparently too much to ask for. Still, it was worth doing. I may yet be posted back there for the placement, though I kind of hope not cos it’s well hot there. The elephant trek and subsequent elephant bathing were much more fun. What a bunch of brilliant animals, proper gentle they were. The breeding farm we saw the next day was even better with loads of little Dumbo's bowling around with their little trunks sniffing around for biccies.
Headed to Kathmandu the next day. 180miles....it took 8 hours. It was a hellish ride, and as the Lonely planet states, you’ve not had a true travel experience until you’ve had a near death experience on local transport. I mean, the driver cruised at 3mph deliberately to give us a better view of a bus crash over the mountain side. All we saw was a charcoaled husk of a bus similar to ours, 300ft below the road, with three pylons missing on the road above. It’s been 2 days, and I am still not laughing about it. Much. On our last night we ended up in a Nepalese club called Space. I’ll give it to Intrepid, it was a very local experience, not a farang in sight. Loads of Black Eyed Peas, Nepalese Euro inspired Trance, and Gwen Steffani. I resisted showing the locals the Peter Crouch Robot. It would been too much for a crowd that grunted “Uhh!! Uhh!! Yeh...! Uh! Yeh!!” to the songs, in their bandana wrapped noggans and Eminem pastel t-shirts.
Spk sn, would be good to hear of owt happening at home.
M x
