October 7th to 13th

October 7^th-9^th (Chitwan)

For three days, my sister and I volunteered in Chitwan National Park with a mahoot (elephant owner/trainer) and his elephant that worked for a hotel giving rides through the safari and jungle. On the first day, we arrived after a five or six hour bus ride from Pokhara and explored the village until the elephant returned back to her stable after working for the day. Around 6pm we walked to the mahoot’s home where he and the elephant lived together. We soon found out that the elephant was not the only one who couldn’t speak English. We discovered this after the manager left and the mahoot attempted to teach us how to make elephant “candy”, which is folded up hay with rice inside. Very difficult to make but probably would have only taken a few more days for us to get down because the elephant needed more than 400 of them a day. After a few hours of getting laughed at by the mahoot and his family, we gave up and went to bed in the mud hut next to the stable. Most volunteers stay at the hotel where the cheapest room was about ten dollars a night (extremely expensive for Nepal) but my sister and I decided we might as well experience real mahoot life…plus it was free. After an uneasy sleep on a wooden bed, we awoke to find the mahoot had already left with the elephant to start their day giving rides to tourists through the national park. We’re thinking he either didn’t understand our sign language version of “when you wake up, knock on the door so we can help” or that we were so bad at making the bundles of hay and rice that he figured he could do it faster himself. We eventually found out that the elephant and mahoot work from 6 in the morning to at least 6 at night so we decided we might as well explore Chitwan and see what things we can do for a cheap price. We talked to the mahoot’s nephew and he offered to take us on the jungle walk and canoe ride for minimum charge and we accepted. For the next four sweaty hours, we paddled down a river in a somewhat rudimentary canoe looking at alligators twice its size and walking through the jungle as quietly as possible to not get killed by surprised rhinos. We learned a lot about Nepali life from our guide. He told us about arranged marriages and how he got married when he was 16 and his wife, 13. At first we were both pretty shocked but he told us how happy their life had been together, even though they didn’t marry for love or at what we deem as an appropriate age. While we talked and walked, we saw deer, monkeys, enormous bugs, a rhino and a wild elephant. By the end of the day we were thoroughly exhausted and started to talk about leaving the next day. Through our two days there, we could see that we weren’t really needed there so we decided to pack up and leave. The next day, the mahoot gave us a ride to the bus station on his elephant and we took a bus back to Kathmandu to meet up with the other girls and our dad.

October 9^th-11^th (Kathmandu)

            For the next three days, we reconnected with our group and explored a section of Kathmandu called Thamel. Thamel is a fairly touristed part of the city, but it hasn’t been taken over yet and is still authentic, just cleaner which was a nice change from our mud hut and dusty heat in Chitwan. After a mix up with the rooming situation, Dorothy and I ended up with a storage closet for a room. A lot of people we had met in Pokhara were in Thamel for the weekend so we got to hang out with them. It was through one of them that we ended up buying tickets for the Shanti Jatra Organic music festival from. We decided it was worth checking out and if we didn’t want to, we didn’t have to stay all three nights. The main reason for the festival happening was the full moon on the 12^th. It was supposed to be the strongest of the year and what better way to celebrate it than to dance with some hippies on top of a mountain and get healed by some shamans? A couple days after arriving in Kathmandu, we headed out on a bus headed to a beautiful resort in the mountains for some well deserved dancing.

October 11^th-13^th (Shanti Music Festival)

            After a terrifying drive through the mountains, we reached an incredible mountain top resort that looked like it was built out of old ruins and paintings. We had a view of the Himalayan range right in front of us the entire time. We quickly found a place for our tents and began the long struggle of piecing together broken and mismatching pieces of two rented tents from Kathmandu. Finally, we figured out some shelter and the music began. We soon discovered that one stage was incredible and the other, terrifying. The good stage had more earthly, ambient-like music that was soothing and was a great combination with the beautiful scenery and location. The scary stage was this very fast psychedelic trance music that rarely changed and had a very dark sound. The music from that stage didn’t turn off until noon the next day…didn’t exactly help us appreciate it any more. Needless to say, we spent almost the entire night by the better stage. The next day, we met the producers of the festival and got a tour of the VIP area, which was a big room, built into the hillside, with a few lofts with beds and a really nice fireplace. It was probably the nicest room we have seen since in Nepal. The second night (the night of the full moon) the place was crawling with police. Turns out they had tried to extort the producers, telling them that if they didn’t pay them they would shut the place down. The producers, being Indian, weren’t used to handling Nepali police so that’s exactly what happened. I’m not sure what the difference is between the two countries process of extortion but I guess something went wrong and there was no more music for the rest of the night. The next morning, we were all awoken by people telling us to pack our bags and leave as soon as possible because the night before a producer had passed away and everyone needed to leave before the police arrived. Thankfully, my dad and I had already planned on leaving and had most of our stuff ready to go. We left on the motorcycle my dad had ridden there and got all the way back to Pokhara in a long eight hour trip. About two hours before our arrival in Pokhara, a bus stopped suddenly in front of us and without enough time to stop, we crashed into it. The entire back end of the bike bounced a foot into the air and if I had not grabbed for my dads waist in time, I would have been launched off. Thankfully, only the front of the bike was damaged and minus a burn on my leg from the exhaust pipe, my dad and I were totally fine. We went on our way and finally got to Pokhara with sore butts and dusty faces. The labor cost to fix the bike as $9.

For the next two weeks I plan on volunteering at a school near Pokhara, on Sarangkot Mountain, with three other women from Europe. I had my first day today and was able to help teach English letters to a group of four year olds who were unbelievably adorable. One girl named Susmita took a liking to me and jumped on me whenever she got the chance. It was totally sweet but I can already tell my arms are going to be sore tomorrow from swinging her around.

Until next time!

Emily