Travels

I went to Chitwan over the weekend to catch some wildlife and spend some time with the volunteers I trained with. It was a crazy experience that began with literally the worst travel day of my life. All in all though it was a lot of fun, I got some good shots, saw some amazingly beautiful scenes, and like all horrible travel experiences I ended up with a good story.



Whitewater rafting on class III rapids, sat at the front which was so much fun. Floating through the valley was incredible. It was one of the most serene scenes I've seen. I sealed my camera away in a water proof bin so no pictures from the rafting itself. Unfortunately I swallowed a mouthful of dirty river water along the way which is the likely result of my GI problems the next day :(


So here's the travel story. I got up at 5 am to get to the bus station by 6:45. For the first leg of the journey I was schedule to be on a "tourist" bus (meaning that at least I had my own seat). 3 other volunteers I trained with were joining me. We were dropped off at the rafting site around noon and finished rafting around 3:00. We hopped onto a local bus after that to go the rest of the way to Chitwan. The local bus part means that we were crammed into a wayyyy overstuffed bus where we were in the last row along with 2 other people which made for 6 of us crammed into a tiny space along with our bags on our laps. Not to mention the bus was scorching hot with a humidity off the charts. This would all have been tolerable if the journey was actually 2 hours as scheduled but as luck would have it, a truck ahead overturned on the narrow two lane road that winds through the hills, so we were stuck for about 3 hours going no where. Finally reached Chitwan at 9:30 at night.




This girl's stare is permanently etched into my mind. Having been stopped for over an hour due to the accident, I decided to hop off the bus and walk around. I saw this girl just staring at me unblinkingly. I motioned to my camera and then at her. She didn't respond at all. As I took the photo she continued to just stare at me. The sun had gone behind the hills so the lighting was very low. This photo is going to need some post processing to crop in (didn't zoom in so I could maintain a low aperture number and minimize shake) and perhaps some brightness adjustment. The picture will never do the scene justice though.


I'm pretty sure taking photos of military posts is not encouraged to put it mildly, so I chose this more "artsy" angle that also gave me a bit of deniability if I got caught :)








This one's for you Shan. Photographer photography :P








I went elephant bathing while I was in Chitwan. It was a much needed respite from the killer heat during the day.


Ah the famous one horned rhino. Unfortunately this is the only animal I saw in Chitwan (aside from some birds). I want a shirt that says "I went to Chitwan and all I saw was a lousy rhino"



I have a lot more pictures that I want to share but uploading just these took an hour so the rest will have to wait.