bye bye nepal

yesterday in the night i arrived in india...so my time in nepal is over - for this trip!!

last sunday i left pokhara with the bus, my goal was bardia national park. i knew it would be a long journey...but i dintn know it would be that long!! i arrived at the station (only local buses go there), and was, not really surprisingly, the only foreigner on that bus. people looked quite strange at me, they didnt really know what to think about me... it was ok though. what was worse was that the bus broke - twice! so we lost many hours waiting that somebody would fix the problems. it gets wuit early dark, at least at 6 its completely dark; so a big part of the journey was in the night. even though it was nepals biggest "highway" there is hardly space for two buses, so its always quite close when a bus or truk cames from the other direction. and since its nepals only street into the west all the time many cars, buses ect. come. we did also see some accidents and often the ambulance...and i decided to avoid traveling in the night in buses in these countries from now on...as good as possible! in the end i met a boy who was also on the bus, he kept apologizing for the condition of the road, the bus...of nepal, the people in the bus...he said he was raised up like this that he has to take care of guests - and im a guest in nepal! it was nice to have somebody who speaks a little bit english around you! at about half past 5 in the morning i arrived in ambasa, where i was picked up by people from the park - after about 16 hours in that bus!

i decided to do a jungle walk. this means that you walk with a guide in the jungle, and there live animals like tigers, elephants, rhinos, crocodiles, a lot of deer,...and many others. the guide had just a stick for protection, no gun.

my duide, indra...

...and myself in the high grass

the most scary part was to walk through that high grass, because if a tiger or a rhino would suddenly stand in ftont of you...and all the protection is one stick...quite paradox, you walk around and want to see the tiger, but are in a way also happy not to see it!!

mostly we walked in the river bed, because its safer...

you can see the animals in advance and also you pass many water holes where the animals are supposed to be! and we found something else in the river bed:

tiger footprints from the previous night

rhino shit from a grown up and a baby!!

suddenly in the river we heard some noise, and as we went closer to see we found a rhino mother and her baby grasing!! since the wind came from their direction they could not smell and hear us, so we could get pretty close - about 15 meters! unfortunately my cam is not good, and we had to stay at the side of the river, so the pictures are not that great. but it is really amazing to be so close to these animals - when they are not in a zoo!!

the ass of the mother and left is the baby, hidden in the grass

lunch place, and there arrived...

..another rhino

tree in the park

sunset

 i decided in the evening to give the tiger a second chance and so i joined a jeep safari the second day!

deer

one of the spots where we waited - but nothing came!

amazing trees...but not only the trees are amazing!!

termites

in the dry river bed

the trees were really great here

crocodile

one of these trees again

 yesterday i left bardia national park at 4 in the morning, 4h bus ride to the boarder...and many many more hours to delhi!! i was in my hotel at 1 in the morning!! just a few pics...more soon!


many many motor rickshaws (pic out of a motor rickshaw!




bangla sahib gurudwara, delhis biggest sikh temple



business asusual in the streets