Hey again,

we just spent some days in Chitwan, a national park in southern Nepal and one of the last natural habitats for tigers. For the first time we took a local bus - so far we only took tourist buses - which was a great experience as the people were really friendly and interested in us. They also helped us getting to the lodge - very helpful as we stayed in a remote place just opposite to the park.

On Steffi's birthday we did a full day hike through the park where we saw some rhinos (luckily from a safe distance), crocodiles, monkeys, lots of birds, deer etc. When our guide saw a tiger we all started to run into that direction to see it - but it slipped away into the thick grass quickly ;( As you can see on the pictures the crocs here look quite different to the ones from Africa and Australia: they've got a narrow jaw and the big male ones have a huge bumb on the tip - btw we took those croc pictures on the breeding farm in the parc..

On the next day we shared a ride on an elephant's back with a nice German couple (Annette & Nante) from our lodge and had a much closer look at even more rhinos. The elephant was getting really close - even a bit too close for our taste as it was really upsetting the rhinos... but they had a lot of respect for the elephant and it's big and noisy trunk.

Two days of long and bumpy bus rides later we are now in Varanasi, the sacred town of the Hindus. But we'll report more on India in our next post. Many thanks for all your comments!