Never Ending Peace And Love?

A Nepalese Rhino in the Royal Chitwan National Park
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From the barren mountains Tibet, we took a bumpy 12 hour 4WD trip down to Nepal. Our altitude dropped 2.5km in one afternoon. At the bottom, we were suprised to see the tropical jungle, butterflies and waterfalls of Nepal.

Our First stop was Dhulikhel, an uneventful little town in the North. Still on our tour, we stayed at a fancy hill-top hotel with an amazing view out over the Kathmandu valley.  Over three nights, we stuffed ourselves on Indian food and relaxed on our private balcony.

wild animals and children

Steve and Lea board their elephant to journey into the Park
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Next up was Kathmandu, staying in the touristy Thamel district. We spent the first day drinking long island iced teas on a rooftop garden. That night, our tour group had a last supper at a beautiful Nepalese restaurant set in the loft of an historic building. We had a banquet of mutton curry, momos, dhal, gin and tonic. We enjoyed nice views over the Kathmandu skyline and then kicked on to a bar. After the goodbyes, our tour group disbanded the next day.

Lea and Steve introduce the Chitwan kids to the "bobbing for apples" game
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Lea and I stayed on in Kathmandu for a week. We visited a few historical towns and then headed south to Royal Chitwan National Park

We did a few guided tours into the Chitwan National Park. We went on a few walking tours, poking around in the grasslands and jungle to find tigers and rhinos. We also went canoeing down the river and went on an elephant safari. We saw plenty of rhinos, deer, monkeys and wild pigs. Fortunately, we didn't see any tigers.

We enjoyed Chitwan so much, we stayed on for two weeks and volunteered in a local orphanage. We spent two weeks teaching the kiddies english, organising games/excursions and helping them with their homework. If you want some more info about the place, check out http://www.cwpcenter.org/

Steve helps wash an elephant in the river. He has since made a conscious effort to work on his tan!
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During the days, the kids were at school, so we had free time to explore the jungle, swim in the local river with the elephants and help the locals with their daily chores. We also went on a 30 km bike ride to see some local lakes.

We both loved Chitwan and made some really cool local friends that we will keep in touch with. It was fun to "rough it" for a while too - the town was in the middle of nowhere, it was monsoon season and it poured down rain all the time, the malaria mosquitos abundant, our room tiny, no running water, no power for most of the time.

Our view over the back fence of the orphanage
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We then went to Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord Buddah. The place where baby buddah popped out was nothing special, but the Nepalese government has arranged for all the buddist countries to build their own temples around the site. Our favourite was the German buddist temple (I guess Germany has some secret buddist heritage the world isn't aware of).

From Lumbini we crossed into India.