Elephants and Gizzards

Elephants!

This week I attended a day long work meeting in Souraha, a national park area an hour and a half from Hetauda.

Main public transportation to the area near the park is a horse drawn carriages.
Yes, besides walking the 7 kilometers from the road, this is the quickest, cheapest, and easiest way to get to where you are going.

And, walking alongside elephants? Part of the day-to-day. There are a bunch of elephants kept for tourists who want to go into the national park. Traditionally, also how folks would move around in the jungle area.

Several of the elephants walked past our hotel to and from the place where they enter the park. And one was kept just a few feet behind the room I slept in.

Now, I do feel very conflicted about elephants being kept captive. I do not feel conflicted, however, about the opportunity to touch and spend time with an elephant. Something I will never forget. The elephant's eye - so carefully taking in everything around it.

These elephants are sometimes adorned with tikkas (like above), and you can see them bathing in the river around mid morning each day. They've been trained in India and understand Hindi. The men who ride them are skilled, communicating through spoken commands and also an intricate system of foot movements and taps of a stick.

Even so, I would watch the elephants sometimes do exactly what they wanted and looks of amused exasperation from their owners.

And ahhh....the river. So beautiful and peaceful. When you are in Souraha, you can just feel that you are at the edge of miles and miles and miles of land that is teeming with wildlife.

Land of rhinos, at least 4 variety of deer, tigers, wild chickens, boars and over 500 species of birds - something like 14% of all the species in the world.

Today I am in Kathmandu on my way to another town (Nagarkot) where we will facilitate the second session of our Leadership course (which I am super excited about, by the way). We have a fabulous team and some really interesting content. I am looking forward to seeing how it goes over.

Just returned from meeting up with a group of people who do something they call the "Hash", a Saturday tradition here. Around 30 people gather at a new spot every week and go on a run (or a walk, like I did) through the villages and country landscapes. Those runners, they are pretty serious. Then afterward, everyone enjoys lots of food and drink.

Among others, I got to meet a Nepali yoga teacher/guru/herbalist and a diplomat from the Norwegian embassy. A very kind man who has his own gardener, driver, cook, and someone who does the cleaning. He has a sense of humor about his set up - aware of the extravagance compared to others' lives. And even offered to send fresh baked brownies to Hetauda when he saw my look of longing for "real" brownies...

We all just returned from eating tantalizing Newari food at a hole in the wall restaurant along a busy, otherwise nondescript Kathmandu street. In addition to the more common beaten rice (churra), spicy vegetables and chickpeas we had chicken liver, goat lungs, gizzard, tongue and some other food that was tasty, but that I thought better not to ask the name of.

Oh my, I live a good life.....

P.S. Note to Catherine and Nick: THANK YOU for visiting and volunteering at COSAN. Pix to follow.