Day 99 Saturday 9 December, Pokhara to Chitwan, Nepal
After some last minute shopping, we cram everything into the car and drive down to Chitwan on the Terrai near the Indian border. Chitwan is a vast national park reputedly with tigers, rhinos, crocs etc which is accessed by crossing quite a wide river. It's another World Heritage site. The park rep who meets us in an old landrover at a designated place on the highway is surprised we want to bring our car across the river to the lodge in the park, but the prospect of leaving it parked on the side of the highway in the midst of maoist territory for 3 days doesn’t appeal much to us. Anyway anything a Landrover can do.......
We begin to have second thoughts when we see the river which is pretty wide and braided with some quite fast flowing bits. We wrap the bonnet in our blue tarp and are thankful we practiced river crossings with crocodiles back in Litchfield NP in the Northern Territory at the start of the trip. Half way across when it starts to get deeper and fast, with water coming half way up the doors we begin to contemplate the prospect of having the car stranded midstream with flooded engine and electronics with no BMW dealer or NRMA/AA man within 3000kms. We also think it might have been a good idea to get the tow strap and towing shackles out of the boot before we submerged and perhaps even opened the windows so we could get out if necessary before the electrics packed up.
However we press on, trying to maintain momentum without causing the bow wave to come over the bonnet and eventually emerge on the far bank. It's then a further 7kms on a sandy track with several more water crossings and rickety bridges before we reach the lodge deep in the jungle. After checking out our ‘lodge’ we inspect the elephants and meet the 28 day old baby.
We begin to have second thoughts when we see the river which is pretty wide and braided with some quite fast flowing bits. We wrap the bonnet in our blue tarp and are thankful we practiced river crossings with crocodiles back in Litchfield NP in the Northern Territory at the start of the trip. Half way across when it starts to get deeper and fast, with water coming half way up the doors we begin to contemplate the prospect of having the car stranded midstream with flooded engine and electronics with no BMW dealer or NRMA/AA man within 3000kms. We also think it might have been a good idea to get the tow strap and towing shackles out of the boot before we submerged and perhaps even opened the windows so we could get out if necessary before the electrics packed up.
However we press on, trying to maintain momentum without causing the bow wave to come over the bonnet and eventually emerge on the far bank. It's then a further 7kms on a sandy track with several more water crossings and rickety bridges before we reach the lodge deep in the jungle. After checking out our ‘lodge’ we inspect the elephants and meet the 28 day old baby.
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