Oasis

30th of September

On the end of an surprisingly populated road, just by a slowly passing brown river and both fenced rice fields and widespread pasture field in all other directions, lays an oasis containing a couple of houses. From the dining room located on the second floor can I sit for hours, just watching the animals passing on the fields at the moment.

One of the people I met in Kathmandu set me up with this place. It's a lot cheaper but mostly a lot more natural. It's all just very genuine, it's how I always pictured it being on a safari, beside the slight lack of big four wheel driven cars and guys with guns. They are guns here thou, but they're all semiautomatic.

A couple of women in long colorful dresses and with big black umbrellas watch over the large herd of water buffaloes on the field. I can vaguely hear the bells toll from the otherwise tranquil wander when the herd is assembled. The occasional trumpet from an elephant can be heard in the distance, sometimes the peacocks fly of to a better location, and the never ending song of the crickets.

My guide took me out in the wild to show me all the animals that were left out in the movie of the Jungle Book. The deer are practically everywhere, there are some wild boars here and there digging for food, monkeys playing in the trees and a couple of rhinos sipping water from a stream. After gently sipping enough water the rhinos apparently like to also act like a sort of customs office, just only being very interested in taking very close look inside everything passing.

Still, this place, called Sauta Shook (possibly) in the Chitwan district, is all about elephants. Riding with them was a lot of fun, bathing them even more. Mostly fun thou, would have been to see them in the yearly game of football that occurs on the a field close to my "oasis". Then they don't seem to be treated very well, which really takes lot of the fun from it. The hooks they use to control them could be used to catch whales, not that I'm a fishing expert, but it doesn't feel like it's supposed to be like this. If there was a creator I don't think she meant it to end up like it currently is.