Is This Real?

We are in a tiny ancient car, zig-zagging slowly on the best parts of the road, almost stopping to cross potholes. The only light, coming from our head beams, illuminates towering gnarled trees. The air is heavy with a sweet smell. 

Tenga sua (ten-gah sue-ah) in Madagascar! Welcome in Madagascar.

We had one of the most pleasant flights, with large chairs and free leg space, a really tasty meal (with a choice of beer, wine and martini) and stewardesses who had a genuine smile. Ioan and myself are to be blamed for coming to this part of the world. He doesn’t remember why, maybe because of the Madagascar movies, but I wanted to see this “flora and fauna” gem. 

Romance For Ever

Bali. The paradise on Earth. The most fantastic travel destination anyone can imagine. Impossible green rice terraces, misty volcanoes, surf beaches, thousand-year old temples, magical sunsets, fabulous food, friendly locals, unique cultural experiences. Romance for ever. I get a question on Facebook: "Is it really beautiful over there?"

My answer: "it's OK."

Bali. 

Angkor Wat, The Biggest And The Best

Before we left we were asked which one of the places to see are we most excited about. Both of us answered without hesitation: Angkor Wat! The combination of excitement from leaving the cold of China and the anticipation of what we were about to see raised our expectations even more and that is never good.

We started by visiting the Angkor National Museum. I planned a couple of hours then we would have gone, for free, to have the first contact and maybe catch the sunset. Wrong plan. The museum closed on us, I couldn't get my family out of there. It is that good.
Next day we started the exploration of the temples. As my guidebook says "it is a unique repository of incredible craftsmanship on a staggering scale." There are hundreds of temples, between 15 and 25 are major touristic attractions. The local brochure lists them with 1 to 3 stars, from interesting to "must see"; two of them have four stars on that three-star scale. If you know anything about this place, then it makes sense.

Elephants

We finish quickly our breakfast, because it's time we leave for the elephants. We climb into a jeep, drive for a few minutes until we reach Chitwan National Park. To be honest, we are in the buffer zone. We get down, pass a few stands with food and juices, and two with souvenirs. We follow the dirt path to a fence with wooden ladders. On the other side is... an elephant, who wears a straw pallet with a cubic wooden frame. Four people on an elephant. Maria volunteers to go separate. We are instructed on how to sit and I choose my place: backside on the left hip. The mahout (elephant driver) nudges his animal and we go.

In the beginning... slowly, to learn the rhythm. Dang-dang forward-left, backward-right and again.

A short break. We stop because the other elephant needs to relieve herself. We start again, toward the river.

Suddenly

The Butterfly Liberator

Chitwan National Park, second day. Ioan and I wake up at 6.30 to go on the bird watch trip. He seems OK, but it's almost funny to see him getting out of bed like an 80 year old, puffing and aching. He has sore muscles from yesterday's elephant activities. We leave at 7, a guide, a Dutch guy and the two of us. We take the road for a couple of minutes, the guide mentions the serious fog, little chance to see anything. I ask why can't we go later and we readily agree to postpone the trip for 8.30. Ioan goes back to bed and won't leave for the rest of the day. He is clearly under the weather, maybe a touch of fever. I leave again, with Kris, the Dutch, and the guide and we have a good 3 hour bird watching trip. Nothing happens at first but at some point we see some kind of crow on the back of a rhino, I get good shots moments later and more birds join in.

A wounded rhino welcomes birds. They clean the wound and this helps it heal faster.

Birds on the rhino. Can you see the little wound on the left side of the picture?

We see a few more birds and a rhino with a huge horn and a huge erect penis. No pictures of that or just by special request. The guide is amazed, apparently the rhino got excited when four women came in his way. It calms down and lays on the ground, blocks the pass over a creek, we have to jump over it.

We end the trip at the guide's house, and while waiting for the car to pick us up, we talk a bit about economics. Everybody here saves money to build a hotel, buy an elephant and a car. The elephant might cost €25000 ($33000) but you can make $100 per day and pay it off in 3 years. But the elephant might die, the car you can sell if it breaks and get some money back. We sit on his porch, his wife makes tea, his children are gone to school. He built the house himself, it's small, maybe twice the size of my bathroom, and there are 12 people living there.
In the afternoon we have scheduled a "jungle walk plus", the plus part is that at the end a local person will show us how they pick products from the jungle to cook food. Ioan was excused for being sick, Ileana sacrificed herself to stay with him, but couldn't hide her excitement. We walk for 3 1/2 hours without seeing any animal, maybe the distant image of a monkey, a deer and a wild pig. We see some trees, we taste the outer shell of some wild walnut, we see the imprint of a paw of a rhino, a nice marsh where rhinos sometime come and a lot of butterflies, spiders and termites. We decide we don't want the plus part and it works out fine that the guide forgets about that. The most action we have all day is Ileana jumping to free a butterfly from a spider web. So I call her "Mom, the butterfly liberator!"

Poor little butterfly

Monstrous spider

On better days rhinos and tigers and deer come to this little lake in the jungle

Nothing happens, but still looking for animals