<William> We spent a few nights chilling out in Chitwan National park - a tropical jungle region in the south of Nepal. It was pretty hot & humid the whole time - the first hot place we've been in about 6 months, so all our warm clothes are now firmly packed away at the bottom of our rucksacks and we've had to dig out the t-shirts & shorts!

We started by visiting the elephant breeding centre. They keep about 4 females and 3 males chained up in a field on pretty short chains which is not very nice to see. Whilst we were there a wild male elephant came out of the jungle to hang out with the others, but got chased away by the guys at the centre. The elephant had obviously heard about the breeding centre and wanted to get in on some of the action! In fact as it turns out, the wild elephant is the father of 3 of the 4 babies there, as the females are chained up and can't run away!

Ahhh baby elephant!

We took a 1 day trek through the park, though much of the time was spent fighting our way through the 10ft high elephant grass. After a long mornings trekking in the baking heat and having seen only a wild boar & kids we were a bit miffed. We spent 45 minutes looking through the binoculars at what we were convinced was a tiger but turned out to be an orange tree (though we were all too scared to go over and have a look). In the afternoon we walked through the woodlands and were much more sucessful. We saw a huge rhino (which stopped to sniff us from a distance) and a pair of sloth bears (look like grizzly bears but with skinny stomachs). In the last coulpe of hours a storm of biblical proportions came overhead and we got soaked to the bone. Stupidly we left all our trekking gear in Kathmandu (waterproof boots et al) as we thought we wouldn't need it - forgot about it being the monsoon!

The day after we took a leisurely ride on an Elephant through a different section of the jungle. From up high you get a pretty good view, and the smell of the elephant masks your own so you can get close to the wildlife. We got to see a younger rhino up close as well as wading past a crocodile.

Startled looking rhino!

We've now arrived in India and we're enjoying it so far. It's hot, but not as humid as Chitwan so it's bearable. Have quite been enjoying the hustle-bustle here and we havent had *tooo* much trouble with people hassling us just yet. We're in Varanasi - an ancient town located on the Ganges which our hotel room overlooks. We've been on the lookout for corpses floating downstream (burial ritual) but haven't seen any yet!
</William> <!--2:39 AM-->