The Quinn Family Excellent Adventure: Goodbye Pokhura - Hello Chitwan. Seeing the Jungle by canoe, foot and jeep.

It was time to move on to another city. We enjoyed a nice meal along the Lakeside with a family of cute cats. Janardan indicated we could leave our Trek sleeping bags and poles with the hotel for later pickup. Whew. Our departure was early with breakfast at 6:30 and taxi at 7:00. The Pokhura to Chitwan bus was a larger tourist bus, yay. I prefer this sort of bus as our bags all fit inside to storage spot. On top of the bus is cool but I've seen some buses go by with stuff not tied down up there. The road to Chitwan is pretty smooth. This bus had air suspension. Quite cushy and bouncy compared to the crashy bangy local bus. 5 hours went buy really quickly. We were soon at the bus station with plenty of taxi pickup people. I could not see or read the Hotel Hermitage pickup sign but a competing company rep helped me find them. We gathered our bags and chucked them into a safari style jeep this time. It was only a 5 minute drive to the hotel. The staff kindly dragged all our bags to our rooms while we checked in, so nice. http://hermitagechitwan.com/ We did not request it but KT got her own private room. This is quite a large hotel for the area. Even though it's over 20 years old, it was well built and well thought out. We were given our 3 day itinerary with lunch soon to follow. We soon met our guide Shanta and he indicated we could simply chill for today if we wanted to. It's common to have tea at sunset here. The property spans the Chitwan National forest so it's surprisingly calm, quiet and beautiful. Our evening was being guests at the Sauraha Tharu Culture House for their wonderful Stick Dance. http://www.chitwantourism.com/activities-and-sightseeing/tharu-cultural-programs.php

Well choreographed dancing with amazing drumming and singing. So cool. The next day we headed out early for a canoe ride. These Canoes are hollowed out trees. They take several months to make and many people to carry. We saw lots of birds and crocs. This place is famous for birds as we learned. After our Canoe we went on a 2 hour hike looking for deer, tiger, bear, elephant, bore, rhino. We saw plenty of tracks, kinda scary actually. In the evening we hopped onto a safari jeep. It's kinda high up on these things. We drove around patiently and saw only a few deer and then, yay a rhino or 3. Lot's of deer too. We popped by a fish farm and watched local villagers round some up. It's so calm here so we extended our stay for 3 more days. Plenty of time to rest, catch up on social media and blog. More later :-)

The plan

Jan 7 - Pokhara to Chitwan by bus. Chitwan Package, Village Walk, Sunset View, Cultural Show
Jan 8 - Jungle Walk, Elephant Breeding Centre, Jeep Safari
Jan 9 - Chilling in Chitwan

Movie links

Sauraha Tharu Culture House Dancing 1
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ALH7nfx61Kz5gwbZCUrbuPi1cvHFQzq_

Sauraha Tharu Culture House Dancing 2
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EhnwZpGwnRsgACWFZIWSVDdWNkVvMPFj

Sauraha Tharu Culture House Dancing 3
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1f3OIfVGwar2ubQtCnai0Pxw9htQcLwN7

Sauraha Tharu Culture House Dancing 4
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CgZTUuOUQJ5b20TMgGIQVLmEfIqlgf_o

Passing a Stork
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-d5iDeVdFQZKdx4u75xoHAAfnpo2G2kj

Cruising on the River
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1K4_uNosmSzZoMwEGr5S7gWAMRBoiV4jy

Jeep in the jungle
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KpW2BepNpY50mR60tWzvvDRScQGM-dK9

Cute Rhino
https://drive.google.com/open?id=11dHqBXefrOYnWs_qLpWN4aA_Txwrbld3

Rhino Crossing
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZcFHdZy4rwypGDeLdXeiyIS2tJryjc9b

Cute Deer
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1immMZosUWPV0YunEs7zs8v4wjK5GvrQN

Passing Shanta's Village 1
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ggs6zEVBy0yGS4ZtYOWm0rQq9LMfFeUu

Passing Shanta's Village 2
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qC1-hzE2axwdf6IhweDQJzfeQT4vB6Dx

Passing Shanta's Village 3
https://drive.google.com/open?id=14KV6lnIeWUWaD3MV4EnlMSEb4kOQNJwZ

Passing Shanta's Village 4
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VMqTrpXen_KEv7tJ1U4lY9r7zGf8roT5

Passing Elephants
https://drive.google.com/open?id=18YPQA_w5I_2r4PQa8oYZbyjyX343j-c-

Cat's, again