Nepal and Bhutan (4)

In the dark, in the jungle, smelling of heavy DEET bug spray and trying to avoid malarial mosquitoes, we sat on chairs and watched not one or two dances, but FIVE separate dances of the local tribes. I must say they were pretty good with the jars on their heads and all.

With one missed dance step, one of those girls could have been knocked out cold!!

And, of course, the dancers pulled us on to the “dance floor” to do a circle dance. No one was around to take pictures. When Tom gets a whiff of having to partake in a dance, he conveniently is in the bathroom.

We needed to cross this river. A couple weeks before, we would have driven our jeep across. But with many previous days of rain, the current was too swift and we had to take these boats across.

Note, the guides were in the water, but none of our tour group really had to get messy.

My discussion of this embarkation shows my mean side.

This lookout tower reminds me of the beginning of my altitude sickness. I was just exhausted after 15 vertical steps and all of me just hurt. But I never had a headache, so didn’t realize it was altitude sickness.

The views of the river was pretty cool.

My panorama photo of the river view.

UGH! Roughing it in the jungle!

Aha!! a fresh tiger track. That was pretty exciting. But with the jeep engine and our inability to keep quiet, we never did see a tiger out in the wild.

We did happen upon a wild boar who decided to cross the road we just had driven on.

Vultures! There’s a whole story about them. Recently 90% of the vultures died and no one knew why and didn’t seem to care. However, without vultures the whole ecosystem failed.

Without the presence of vultures, carcasses will remain exposed to the environment for weeks – the resultant build-up of harmful diseases and bacteria, such as anthrax, botulism and rabies, negatively impacts not only our wildlife, but humans too. A drug called, I think, diclofenac was used for treating sick animals. But when those animals died, that medicine acted as a poison to the vultures and it wiped out almost all of them. Once the medicine they prescribed was changed to Meloxicam, the vultures’ numbers grew. In additional, the animal poachers didn’t like the vultures flying around to notify the authorities of their kill, so they doused the dead animals with the poisonous medicine also, to get rid of the vultures.

We live in a very precarious eco- system, where we are all dependent upon each other.

We were tooling along in our jeep when we hit a very deep and wet spot and got stuck. But not before the mug went flying and poor Ilene got an armful. Her entourage were very well prepared with wet cloths and a towel. But we all had to get off the jeep and let Anup, the driver and the driver’s assistant get the jeep unstuck and moving backwards. Needless to say, we didn’t attempt passage again.

We were having our picnic lunch on the banks of the river when I spotted a two-headed elephant. Just kidding. These are two separate elephants. One is a 50-year old female who doesn’t go anywhere without her 30 year old female friend. The 30 year old is the daughter of the other’s best friend who was moved to another area of Nepal. Sad. But so nice one protects the other.

This is the comparison of my foot to an elephant print.

They are sweet and very well behaved. They love their ‘sandwiches’ that we fed them, made of hay and glop.

My elephant hugs.

Note how I keep the mosquitoes off my ankles. Not attractive; but effective. Pants inside the sox.

Showing how people live in Nepal.

We flew Buddha Airlines to Pokhara, the second largest city in Nepal. And stayed at a very nice resort for two days. My most excitement upon arrival, however, was getting my 5 pounds of laundry done for $15. I managed an 18 day trip with a 34 pound suitcase, so the clothes had to be worn several times each.

Poor Michael went to a laundry next to the one Tom and I went to and I wish I had the photo of his white undergarments now yellow/brown looking like they had just come out from under the oven broiler. Apparently, they didn’t use clean water. Michael had to wash them by hand in the sink in order to wear them. I dodged a bullet.

Trekking is very popular in Nepal because of the 8,000+ meter mountains that scream to adrenaline junkies “CLIMB ME”.

We visited the Gorkha Memorial Museum. The Gorkhas were very fierce fighting men that were very willing to die for the country they were fighting for. We saw a bunch of young men doing a boot camp crossing the suspended bridges, etc. in order to get into the Gorkha Army. They were not interested in joining the Nepal Army. The Gorkhas fought in every war Nepal fought.

OF COURSE, we had to walk up hundreds of steps to get to the suspension bridge. (It seems we were constantly walking up; and never down.) I thought it was a blast and walked all the way to the end.

These pants of mine were funny. I had them on as we left the jungle, and I constantly thought there we black bugs on me. NOT a good choice for in a jungle.

I love the sound of running water.

Very little amount of Russian architecture left in the city.

See!!! Here are the steps going UP again!! To the Bindhyabasini Mandir, one of Pokhara’s most important shrines. They were just removing the scaffolding for a huge tent that was up for a festival that had happened the day before. We spent over 1/2 an hour of people taking pictures of a mountain you could not see. “It’s just behind those clouds.” “If the fog lifts, you’ll soon see…” “Maybe tomorrow, you will see the Himalayas”, was the constant patter.

This was the end of DAY 7. And this trip goes through DAY 18!!!!!

SAFE TRAVELS

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