Island Jungle Resort...aka...the JPC

Day 58-60, September 11-13, 2000 (No Malaria)

Arjun and I got an early start to my next destination: Chitwan National Park. Chitwan Park is also located in the large plain in the south of Nepal about 3 hours east of Lumbini. I was scheduled to stay at a place called Island Jungle Resort. I have been here for 3 hours now and all I can tell you is that the “Jungle” part of the title is absolutely correct. It may be on an Island as I had to cross I river to get here but other than that, I have no clue as to my location. The “resort” part is a stretch…a big stretch. I am in my room right now waiting for lunch. It is Spartan at best which isn’t a problem but I am hoping that the lack of mosquito nets doesn’t become one. This entire trip, I’ve been waiting to see unnaturally large bugs worth of some museum collection. I thought that I’d see them in SE Asia but rarely saw any bugs including mosquitoes. I can count my total mosquito bites on one hand since this trip has begun. That may be about to change. While waiting for my boat to cross the very large, swift river to pick me up, I noticed large red beetles, large blue grasshoppers, and mosquitoes the size of small birds. My room does have screens and I am hoping that the mosquitoes here are just too big to get in the room. Unfortunately, there is a gap under the door that a goat could climb through. I may finally be glad that I brought malaria pills. The malaria blog may soon be true to its name!

While I’m here, I suppose to do some safari, jungle trekking, and white water rafting. They have elephants that they use for the safaris. I’m a little torn, after what I saw in Thailand, about riding the elephants. I know that it’s not the best situation for them. I also know that if they aren’t useful for tourism, they probably aren’t useful for anything else and will be sold into something worse, set free to fend for themselves, or maybe even killed.

I’m here for three days and nights with my activities starting this afternoon. When I arrived and checked in, I learned that there is no power except from 6-8 o’clock at night. There are armed guards to protect the guests in case of rhino, bear, or tiger attacks and when I say armed, I mean armed. They are carrying large machine guns. Also, much to my disgust, there is no internet at all. This will be the longest I have gone without internet access since 1995.

So far, this is more like “Jungle Prison Camp” than “Island Jungle Resort.”

The nice part is that I’ve already had plenty of time to catch up on writing the blog. It is nice to write in the present tense a little. Hopefully, I can keep a charge on my battery long enough to keep up-to-date while I’m here. Then when I get back to Kathmandu, I can upload several pictures and post some entries.

Day 2 at “Jungle Prison Camp”

Yesterday was interesting to say the least. When I arrived at the camp, everyone else was out on jungle activities so I was alone in the resort. After I wrote yesterday’s entry, it was lunchtime and I got to meet the rest of the guests. It was a disaster. There was a couple from France, four guys from Spain, and two girls from Ukraine. None of them spoke English so it was a long lunch. I tried to bust out my best high school Spanish on the Spaniards and that lent itself to a little conversation. Unfortunately, the conversation ended abruptly when I was trying to tell them I was embarrassed that I didn’t know more Spanish after studying it for 5 years and instead told them that I was pregnant.**

After lunch, I went for a jungle safari on an elephant with the two Ukrainian girls. I am still conflicted about riding the elephants but they seem to be treated pretty well here so that made me feel a little better. Also, I was very happy I was 10 feet up on an elephant when we ran into a rhinoceros. The rhino was eating some grass in the river and didn’t even seem to notice us on the back of the elephant.

I thought that I was going to have nobody at all to talk to for three days but when I got back to the jungle prison camp, a large new group had arrived. They were late to camp because some locals had shut down a bridge between here and Kathmandu and were not allowing any traffic across. Locals here pretty much run the roads. They set up tolls wherever they like and decide if bridges are open or closed. They new group had to take their luggage, walk across the bridge, and get on a new bus on the other side. I am a little worried since I have to go over this bridge on Sunday morning. I’m hoping that it is opened back up by then.

Part of the group that arrived consisted of a family from Maine and a large group of people from the UK and Israel. Since last night, I have been hanging out with the family from Maine. They have adopted me as their jungle prison camp son and that makes me very happy because for a while there, I was a jungle prison camp orphan. The Goodale family has been incredibly nice to me have been fun to hang out with. Nat and Lilly are the parents and they have four kids. Abe and Anna are in their 20’s and there are two little girls, Adrianna and Jessie. Anna is fresh out of competing in the Beijing Olympics for the US Crew Team. She won the gold. U.S.A…U.S.A…

Goodale family, if you are reading this, thanks again for including me in your jungle activities and congratulations, Anna. You are my favorite Olympian. Michael Phelps sucks.

The two younger kids showed me some of their best card tricks. Although they didn’t always get their intended outcome, all of the tricks were entertaining. They also taught me a new card game. I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to beat two children at cards when their combined age it two thirds of you own. If you’re going to play, you should play to win.

I also made friends with another Israeli couple, Tal and Irit. The three of us played a lot of cards with another Irish girl, and two guys from Denmark. The jungle prison camp is like a low-tech United Nations. While at the JPC, there were people from the USA, England, Ireland, Canada, Ukraine, Israel, Denmark, India, China, Australia, and France.

Over the course of the three days, I took a few jungle walks and several elephant safaris. We saw monkeys (of course), crocodiles, deer, an owl, and rhinos. While we saw several tracks and claw marks on trees, the local tigers eluded us. There are three that live in the area but are apparently very shy of humans and sightings are more by accident than design. Honestly, I am starting to think that the tracks and claw marks are planted by some eager to please jungle prison camp guides.

The first jungle walk we went on, we got our safety talk about the dangerous animals that we could encounter. Jungle safety is as follows:

Rhinoceros – If it charges, run away from it in a zigzag pattern. If that doesn’t work, climb a tree.

Bear – Do not climb a tree. If a bear charges, stay in a group and make a lot of noise.

Tiger- Stay in the group and do not make a lot of noise. Do not turn your back on the tiger and do not leave the group. Tigers like to attack single targets from behind.

I am quite sure that if any of these animals meant to do me harm, no safety talk would’ve helped. I saw a rhino charge from the back of an elephant one day, there was no amount of zigzags that would’ve stopped me from being flat. Two rhinos got in a fight which sounded like gunshots. One barreled out from behind a tree running faster than an animal that size should be able to. It freaked our elephants and they trumpeted and started running towards the rhino. Luckily, the drivers calmed the elephants down pretty quickly. It was crazy.

(Tiger Claw Marks on a tree)

In reality, the animal we had to worry about most were the leeches. We never got the leech safety speech. The crawl up on leaves near the ground and stick to your ankles as you walk by. They even get in your socks. If your lucky, you can feel something wet on your leg and get them off right away. Unfortunately, they have an anesthetic and anti-coagulant in their saliva so you can’t feel them bite and when you get them off (which is usually pretty easy), the bite takes a long time to stop bleeding.

Day 3 at the JPC.

Today is half-way over and all I have done is sit around the dining area by the river. Last night, I had a little mishap after watching a traditional dance from a local tribe. I was walking to the dining hall and rolled my foot on a rock outside my cabin. Today, I can’t put any weight on it at all, am walking around using a cane, and really don’t know how I am going to get on an elephant this afternoon. I have decided that I am never walking around the dark jungle wearing flip flops after having too many beers again. In all reality, I am a little nervous that this injury is going to slow me down. I am leaving for Egypt on Tuesday (it is now Saturday) and for the three and a half weeks after that, I have to be on my feet a lot. The timing of this couldn’t have been worse. Hopefully, tomorrow, I’ll be up and running.

** If you don’t get this joke, go online and look up the words in Spanish for embarrassed and pregnant.