March 8
Being back in Kathmandu after our trekking, we wanted to leave it as quickly as possible again. We spent a day doing laundry, eating steak with the 4 Swedish girls who we had met again at the end of the trekking, and booking a trip to Tibet. We leave for Tibet on the 11th.

But until then, we wanted to relax a little and so we went to Pokhara, 7 hours by tourist bus from Kathmandu. It's a small town at the Fewa lake, with the Annapurna mountain range in the background. It's much more relaxed and clean than Kathmandu, so we were very happy. On the day of the new moon (2 days ago), there was the festival of the goddess Shiva. In the evening the people make big fires in the street, singing prayers and ....the fun part: heating sugar cane sticks in the fire and then hitting them on the street, that gives a loud bang. Almost like fireworks, but then much more fun to do, and we joined them!
Our rest didn't last long though, because on the 2nd day we met the Dutch guys again that we had met during the first days of our trekking to Everest. They were with 4 now (Willem, Gerjan, Frank and Martin). We had been thinking about going rafting, that seemed to be really good in Nepal. They wanted to join us, which made us a nice group, but also wanted to go to Chitwan national park. Willem is very good in negotiating a good price, so the end of the story is that we're now in a lodge in the jungle and have done some pretty exciting rafting the last 2 days.

The rafting was on the Marsyandi river, a category 3 to -5. Most of us had never rafted before, and then this is quite a high category to start with, but we wanted some excitement....and excitement we got! The first day we would raft 2,5 hours, but within 10 minutes the boat hit a sharp rock and that was the end of the first day rafting. We had rafted 740 meters (GPS measured)!
The 2nd day we had to raft now the whole track, which was around 4 hours. After 10 minutes Marloes fell out of the boat, but was dragged back inside. The water level was pretty low, so many rocks were above the water. 20 Minutes later the boat got stuck at the start of a big rapid and it flipped completely. Everybody hit several rocks in the water and got dragged down the rapid. Marloes got stuck with her foot behind a rope and was dragged down the rapid under the boat. Bruised and battered we all reached the shore, shaking from the shock and the cold and having lost 3 paddles.
After regaining our courage, we decided to carry on, hoping it would go better now. But after another 2 hours, we got stuck again and the boat flipped another time. Luckily, this time it was at the end of the rapid and somehow more controlled. But we didn't really like rafting so much anymore and we were happy that we were almost at the finish. After a quick lunch, we went with the minibus to Chitwan, where we're staying in a nice resort in the jungle.

Last night we went to bed early, after the exciting day. This morning we got a wake-up call at 5.45 and went bird-watching at 6.30. We don't know anything about birds, but saw a nice woodpecker ;-)
After breakfast we did a ride on an elephant, hoping to spot tigers or rhino's. But all we saw were some deer, peacocks and ducks. But riding an elephant was cool!

March 12
The day of the elephant ride, we had some more activities planned. In the afternoon we had a truly great experience: watching and joining the elephant bathing! We all sat one after the other on an elephant and he would stand in the water and splash himself and us with his trunk, really funny! Then we went for a jungle walk and a boat ride in a kind of canoe. This time we saw several crocodiles, some very big.
In the evening we (actually only Marloes, Jeroen was at the bar with the other guys ;-) enjoyed a traditional dance performance; This is what happens if one goes to an all-inclusive resort.

The next morning we got another early wake-up call and Jeroen went again on a jungle walk, hoping to see rhino's. But again no luck, he did see some monkey's though. After breakfast we left and went back to Kathmandu by bus. The day after we had our third early morning wake-up call: 5.00, to go to Tibet. More about that under "Tibet".