So, its been a while since i uptated this blog. I have been flat out surveying all around the national park for the last 10 days. sitting on the back of the motorbike for 2-3 hours each way to get to some of these places! My supevisor here told us we had to go back and finish all 40 surveys in Mardi.. that place that looked like the surface of the moon. and in doing so totally trashed the motorbike.. cruising back from mardi on the highway, someone kept beeping us, then we pulled over he said our rear wheel was wobbling all over the place.. we'd knackered the rim of the rear wheel, and all the bearing in both wheel hubs needed replacement plus loads of other mechanical thingy-ma-jigs. anyway 12hours later in the mechanics and a shed load of ruppes later we were back on the road!


a view from the road in one of the villages. this is the middle of the rice harvest, and when they have cut the rice (by hand.. there are not many tractors here!) and threshed out the rice grains (by hand) then they place the rice straw out in front of their houses to dry before making a huge stack and keeping it as fodder for the animals for the rest of the year.


not a great shot, but i got invited to a nepalese wedding. the daughter of the owner of the hotel i'm in was getting married. a whole day of festivities with loads of food, and about 400 people. This is the groom arriving behind a procession of elephants and band!

lunch-time in one of the districs we were surveying.. notice the cow in the back ground, and what you cant see is all the flies on my food, straight from the cow dung.. nice.... this is rajesh my interpreter/driver. the things hanging up are the maze cobs drying.

- this is the most eye-ore looking buffalo i could find...... no thistles here though!

one of the vet technicians at his desk. not a huge amount of medicines here, but they do an amazing job, with v little support.

Another exciting story was that we saw 2 cobras... the first slitherd across our path on the motorbike but we were going v slowly so it was no problem. But the second, we were belting it up this road when one just shot across the road right in front of us.. Rajesh slammed on the breaks and it was a Massive black cobra, we just avoided it, and i was like.. cool a huge cobra.. but rajesh was visibly shaking... apparently if you run over one, they turn and strike the bike, but usually get your leg as thats the closest thing... so we quietly drove off, but i was like "cool" quietly under my breath...

So now i have finished all the surveying and am now back in the office in Sauraha, translating all the surveys from nepalese into english.. quite a tedious task given that my nepalese is non-existant, and putting it all into excel! next few days will be less exciting, but i an very relieved not to have to be sitting on that motorbike for a while.

i'm also trying to blag my way onto the rhino monitoring excurstions that happen a couple of times a week (on elephant back), so i should get some photo's of Rhino, and there are two baby orphaned Rhino that were picked up after the last flooding here and they are at the national park headquarters. So hopefully i can go and see them (one is 6 weeks one is 2 weeks!) and apparently they are super cute and come up and suckle on your hands.