Warm welcome in Chitwan

I was picked up from the Hotel in Kathmandu by Bamdev, who is my friend and the cook at the ISER guesthouse. It was not such a bad drive down to Chitwan. There was some congestion and traffic jams and the road condition was pretty atrocious at times but all in all it went smoothly. We were driving a tiny tiny little car. Probably only had a two-stroke engine in it. We came upon this part of the road where cars were having to share one lane because there was some construction on the other side. Our driver let one big truck drive by from the opposing direction and then our driver proceeded to zoom by when another big truck tried to push through the bottle-necked road past us immediately following the previous truck. We were at an impasse. The truck would not back up and I thought for sure that our driver would have to back up and let the giant truck by. Instead our driver deliberately zoomed right up to the very front of the truck and just held down the horn giving the other driver a very stern look. It was pretty hilarious. Cars started stopping behind us and laying on the horn. The truck eventually had to relent and backed up just a smidgen for our little car to go by. As we were passing they exchanged some 'not too pleasant' words.

I arrived in Chitwan late afternoon. It is significantly hotter in Chitwan than it was in Kathmandu. Uncomfortably hot. So having the AC working is a must...especially for the foreigner with no tolerance to heat. Invariably there was a problem with the electricity in the evening when no one was around. I had to call someone over and they got most things working by the end of the night.

Today, I went out with two assistants from ISER to speak with members of community forests in the area about the potential for collaboration on the tiger research. Both community forests were very positive about working together on the project. At the first community forest we had an unexpected guest. A rhino! It just casually walked nearby eating the grass. It did so for quite some time. Check out the pictures to see how close it got to us. Within just a few feet! One of the community forest members assuaged any fear I may have had by saying that this particular rhino is an old resident and that it does this quite regularly. The best part was when the rhino got very close it paused from eating for a moment and huffed softly as a warning to everybody. This instantly broke the calm and everybody stood up quickly and nearly bolted away. In a couple of the pictures with me in it you can see the people to my side bunched up near the back of the enclosure. We also couldn't leave when we had wanted to because the rhino had sauntered over towards our motorcycles and continued to eat grass for a while.