The one-hour flightseeing tour to Everest was a regular commercial flight from Kathmandu.  I was booked on the first flight of the day at 6:45 a.m. in order to maximize my probability of seeing the peak.  That meant I had to be at the airport to get in line for when the terminal opened at 5:30.  Like all my domestic flights in Nepal, it was late.  The Buddha Air Everest Experience flight with its 19 passengers didn’t lift off until 8.

I could try to identify the mountains in the photos, but do you care?  The link above from Buddha Air will help if you do.

Mt. Everest is over 29,000′ high, and the plane flies within 5 nautical miles of the peak.  It’s the one with the clouds already forming on it in the following pictures.

Oops, that turned out to be 13 elephant pictures, so here’s a photo I liked that didn’t fit with any of my Chitwan storylines.

Indian Pond Heron

Asian Openbill

Asian Openbill

Asian Openbill and ??

I cannot identify the set of three birds in the lower part of the above picture, but here are some more.

I could put together a gallery of photos from the internet of the many birds I saw, but why bother when someone else has a great gallery.  I didn’t see all of these, but I saw a great many.

One-horned Indian rhinoceros

We also saw spotted deer and rhesus macaques, but you wouldn’t recognize them in my photos.

What we didn’t see was the elusive Bengal tiger.  Of course, after not seeing any jaguars in Manu, my expectations of seeing one weren’t very high.  However, we did see proof of their existence if the guides were correct in their identification of these paw prints.

Cabin at Temple Tiger

and there was a central lodge for eating and congregating. 

The lounge. The dining hall was in a separate building.

Like the best of the lodges in Peru, electricity was rationed to specific hours of the day.  The food was excellent; the service attentive. 

The rooms were fairly open to allow the evening breezes to cool the cabins. 

In Peru, some of the camps featured cabins with private baths, but not all.  This bathroom was by far better than the best in Peru. 

I especially liked the floor

And the sink had counter space!

The camp was nicely situated with a viewing deck 

which provided a place for viewing the sunrise. 

The primary activity at Temple Tiger is elephant riding. 

Riding through the phanta

 The elephants go where you would never go.  The riding platforms enable you to spot wildlife among the tall grasses.  And, the elephants don’t scare off the wildlife.

At the Temple Tiger dock

One morning we also went out on one of these boats looking for wildlife.  Unlike the Manu in Peru, we didn’t see very much.

Great Egret

Great Egret in flight

An elephant after his bath

Crocodile

A tree in bloom

I assumed that the banks were part of the park and, therefore, off limits for habitation, but there were a few “residences” on some sand bars.

"Homes" in the sand

I think this man was cooking something

In some places, the banks were quite steep.

Sandy banks of the Narayani

The locals all used a type of narrow dugout canoe.

Dugout canoes used on the Narayani near Chitwan NP

The river seemed shallow enough that poles were used more than oars

On the Narayani early in the morning

At first the road was paved

The paving ended

The obstacles on the road could not be simply circumvented

Along the way, I saw piles, and piles, and piles, and piles.

Piles of rocks

Piles of bricks

Piles of hay

Piles of manure

There were new buildings, not yet completed buildings, and well-used buildings.

A new, brightly painted home/shop

Under construction next to a corn field

A farmyard with hay drying everywhere. Note the sleeping platforms on the veranda.

It was the very end of March, and everyone was busy trying to get ready for the monsoon season.

A typical farmyard. Note the outdoor oven.

Note the water pump on the left. These people appeared to have wells.

Roofs were used for drying all sorts of things

It's too hot for a wool hat!

A quiet front porch

There were also lots of people working in the fields.

My back hurts just looking at her

Is she heading to or from her rice paddy?

 This well-dressed man in his white shirt was a rarity.

Relief from the sun

T-shirts were much more common.

Ouch, now my feet hurt

We eventually reached the park, which was surrounded by a fence and had a guard to check us in.

Welcome to Chitwan National Park

When the park was created in 1973 in order to save the wildlife and their habitat, more than 22,000 peasants had to be removed from within the park boundaries.

From the park entrance, we bounced our way over a narrow track to a landing stage on the Narayani River where the ground was covered with pink petals.

A floral carpet

Located in what is called the terai, “a belt of marshy grasslands, savannas, and forests at the base of the Himalaya range”, in southern Nepal just to the north of India, it was HOT and it was dusty and smoggy.  Going to Chitwan, I rode with a couple from Toronto in a really old, delapidated jeep with a non-functioning window that limited my picture taking and fresh air.  Returning, we three shared an old bus with three young Indian-Americans whose parents had stayed in India visiting relatives.

These photos should give you an idea of what “urban” Nepal is like outside the capital of Kathmandu and the tourist town of Pokhara.

First, the traffic.  There aren’t nearly the number of automobiles.  Buses, rickshaws, bicycles, and motorcycles are far more prevalent.

On the road in the Terai

The bus "station" in the middle of nowhere

Need your bike, but it's too far to pedal? Ride on top of the bus.

Bikers

Note the variety in women's clothing styles

Note the group of rickshaws in the background, building materials, and tower of tires

For the most part, the paved road was pretty good.  I’m not sure what these obstacles were for; we didn’t stop for a police checkpost or anything like that.

An obstacle coarse on the main highway

Trash appeared to be collected in central locations–like the middle of the street.

Trash collection or dump?

Housing varied a lot, from the two-to-three story apartment buildings in the background of the above photo to freshly painted, if not new, nice-looking homes.

Some houses were brightly painted

Shopping opportunities ranged from the shop fronts like those found in Kathmandu to rural markets to bicycle and cart entrepreneurs with some unique goods.

I didn't remember seeing a metal bucket in the city, only plastic.

Note the bottles in the case that look like shampoo and laundry detergent.

A roadside market or bazar

This woman seems prepared to cook your vegetables if you want

A cart filled with spools of ribbon. Note the man in the background with his sun shield.

And this was my favorite.

Balloon? Pan? Plastic collander?

Birethanti at 6:30 in the morning

I could not figure out what this woman was doing on her roof at 6:30 in the morning.

A woman working on her roof

It was a short 1/2 hour walk, including one last suspension bridge, to the main road where our taxi driver was waiting.

One last bridge

As we neared Pokhara after about 1 1/2 hours, we stopped at a Tibetan refugee camp. 

Tibetan Buddhist temple near Pokhara

Tibetan woman spinning

By 10 a.m., I was settling into my hotel room at the Four Seasons in Pokhara.  I spent the day shopping, eating a hamburger and French fries in the garden at the Boomerang with Monica and Cash (my new friends from the Netherlands), and just relaxing.

Street sweeping in Pokhara; my back hurts just looking at him

Where do you keep your cow?

Hanging succulent

Brahminy starlings near my hotel balcony

My trek in the Himalayas was over, but I was not yet done with the mountains.  A flight-seeing trip to Everest was still on my agenda after returning to Kathmandu.

The trek was neither as long or as hard as the John Muir Trail (three weeks in the California Sierras), nor was the food nearly as good.  And those steps–give me a switchback any day.  This was an entirely different kind of trek.  It involved walking between villages and among fields with overnights in rustic guesthouses rather than camping in the wilderness.  It was much more a cultural experience rather than an outdoors experience. 

BUT, the Himalayas are the tallest (and youngest and largest) mountains on earth.  If you’re a mountain lover, you have to go.

The Modi Khola valley leads to the Annapurna Sanctuary

The mountains tower over you

The sun rises really late

 When you reach the Sanctuary at 13,000′, Annapurna at over 26,000′ still looms over you.

In the Sanctuary

Mt. Whitney at 14,500′ doesn’t compare.

Mt. Whitney from the desert floor

Starting down the steps

Being about 500 years newer than the Inca's staircase, the steps weren't quite as high

Will they ever end?

With my eye problems I really prefer going up rather than down.  These steps were a psychological torture, along with being really hard on the knees.  To add to the agony, the thermometer on my pack reached 80 degrees in the shade by mid-morning, and there was no shade.

We finally reached the bridge over the Bhurungdi Khola

Bridge over the Bhurungdi Khola

and several waterfalls.

We still weren’t done with steps.

More steps along the Bhurungdi Khola

On a terrace along the river I saw an interesting “scarecrow”, the only reference to the Maoists I recognized as such.

Terrace "art"

To scare the crows or make a political statement?

The rhododendrons were largely replaced by other flowers.

Pointsettia

The trail eventually joined the east bank of the Bhurungdi Khola and flattened out.  The Bhurungdi Khola wasn’t much of a river at the end of March, but it had a huge collection of rocks.

Pack train along the river path

Bhurungdi Khola

We’re nearing civilization which is moving even closer with the building of a new road.

This segment of the new road doesn't connect to anything yet, and it's very hot and dusty

A work in progress

We were soon back to the old trail.

Back on the old trail

And a few more steps

The trek from Ulleri to Birethanti is supposed to take 2 3/4 to 3 1/2 hours going down.  Going up the books suggest 3 1/2 to 5 hours.  It probably took me 4 1/2 to 5 hours.  Except for lunch, we didn’t stop–a real torture for me as it was extremely hot and I got dehydrated.

After a shower at the Moonlight Hotel in Birethanti, guess what I had to drink?

The Moonlight Hotel "bar"

An Everest!

Birethanti had shops because it was just possible to reach it by road, although a high clearance SUV would have been much better than the cars I saw.

A street in Birethanti