Saturday 19th November 1983
We were awoken at 04:00 hrs. by a tap on the door from our budget “safari guide”. George peeled off his shit-spattered trousers and pants and changed into track suit bottoms. I whipped on my black cotton Chinese Kung Fu slippers and we were off into the pre-dawn darkness to await our companions, a soapy British bird-spotting couple.
For about an hour we followed a track that terminated at a river that we were obliged to wade across. This formed one of the borders of the Chitwan National Park and by this route our guide avoided the payment kiosk at the main gate. After wandering about on dewy trails in the morning mist for a while we were beginning to think this a fruitless excursion when we came across two rhinoceroses.
The guide, with my camera, and the English chap stalked the grazing beasts in an effort to get photographs. Suddenly all hell let loose when three elephants bearing “Encounter Overland” tourist idiots festooned with cameras and smiles came crashing into the clearing.
The rhino’s lumbered about trying to escape and the hither-to quiet English girl said “Fucking Hell!“ and scampered away behind us, in search of a tree to climb. Further exploration revealed another rhino, some deer, and a troop of monkeys. Joe English picked up a leach in the process, despite his nylon gaiters.
The sun was fully up now and we steamed back to the camp for breakfast – omelette and rice pudding! After breakfast we got down to washing, both ourselves and our clothes in the mud walled showers and at the pump (reminiscent of the manual water pump on Pete Willis smallholding on England, which we referred to as Pete’s Farm).
With all our laundry strewn about on hedges, thatched roof tops and on the grass, we sat in the sun drinking coke and perusing a book called “Work your way around the world” for job opportunities. This book was researched and written by Susan Griffith who is a freelance editor and writer who has specialized for more than 25 years in writing books and articles about travel, especially working and volunteering abroad.
The first edition of her best-known book “Work Your Way Around the World” was researched in 1982. Covering a whole world of opportunities, it reveals the best places to find work, how to get the necessary permits, tips for travelling safely and much more, including: practical information on a broad range of jobs from the everyday to the extraordinary.
At 12:00 hrs. we took a walk “around the block” to relieve the boredom and returned two hours later for our afternoon siesta. At 17:00 hrs. we ordered dinner and I sat by the window of our hut awaiting the usual procession of elephants that returned this way to the stables at sunset. They went passed when it was too dark to take a photograph, but I took one anyway to justify my wait.
As it was dark now everybody gravitated towards the lamplit central hut to await their evening meal. A newly arrived English couple launched into broadcasting their travel itinerary as the shrewd staff of the huts bought bottles of beer from the hotel opposite at 23 Nepalese Rupees each and sold them to this soapy gullible duo for 28 Rs. It would appear that these wretches came here overland by car; is nothing sacred?
George has been making a lot of trips to the toilet, diarrhoea being a convenient excuse to spy on a comely Swedish girl in a poorly partitioned shower stall opposite. After dinner we retired to our hut and read our books for a while before passing into the oblivion of sleep.
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