Bhaktapur

After a fifteen hour bus ride we were back in Kathmandu. We decided to go to Bhaktapur to chill out for a few days. It once was the capital of the Kathmandu valley. It has more Hindu and Buddhist temples per square kilometer than any other place in Nepal. The old city is preserved and rebuilt after the 2015 earthquake. The old city is off limits to cars and trucks but unfortunately scooters and motor bikes can buzz around at will. We stayed in a simple guesthouse close to one of the main squares and spent our days exploring the old town.

More Bardia

Padam our very competent guide sent us these the only blurry pic of our tigers. They did look spectacular through binoculars.

Probably the only tigers we will see in this lifetime

Bardia Park

Bardia Is a little used national park in West Nepal. We are staying at the Forest Hideaway a beautiful guesthouse type resort on the Eastern border of the park. It has a beautiful garden and friendly staff. It is a great place to convalesce.  More on that later.
We chose a walking tour with our guide, Padam. He is an expert birder but of course the big tips are in showing people tigers. We did a lot of walking that day and tallied about sixty species of birds. At our stop for lunch overlooking a potential tiger crossing area, we were lucky to spot a one horned rhino. Then Padam's phone rang and we were off on a forced march to where one of his fellow guides had spotted a tiger. You guessed it. The tiger was long gone when we arrived. This is a familiar scenario that we had experienced on our last tigerless visit to Bardia. Off we went to another tiger viewing spot. Along the the way we got some great views of the great slatey woodpecker, the largest in the world. Padam figured we should revisit the spot where the tiger had been seen. It was late in the day just as the sun was going down.
To put this all in perspective, over the last three trips to Nepal and India we have spent a lot of time looking for tigers always arriving a few minutes late. I was reconciled to never seeing one.

We stole this from the web but that is just what it looked like

As soon as we stepped out of the bush Padam urgently whispered " tiger tiger ". And there they were a male and female lying on a beach in all their wild splendour.  Over the next five minutes we watched the male take a leisurely walk across the river and then walk down the beach towards us finally disappearing into the elephant grass. Even Padam who has seen a lot of tigers was impressed.

Man cold from hell

We spent another day in the park and spotted another four rhinos and three wild asiatic elephants but no more tigers.

Lucknow and Nepalganj

Lucknow was the first city we visited in India five years ago. At the time we were a little shell shocked and didn't get to see many if the sights. All the mosques and monuments here are only a few hundred years old and demonstrate the architectural achievements of the Moguls. There was also a bloody rebellion against the British in the late 18th century.

We arrived by train and checked into a pretty nice hotel. Our main sight seeing was a guided tour through the old city. The tour was cheap, low key and interesting.

Our last trip we hoofed it mostly. We walked miles through noisy dirty streets arriving at our destination tired thirsty and dishevelled.  This time we did the right thing and negotiated with the tuk tuk drivers.

After Lucknow we took a car and driver a 180 km to the Nepalese border at Nepalganj. It is a very sleepy place. Indians and Nepalese cross unimpeded. We had to find the unobtrusive immigration offices and check out and get our Nepalese visas. Going through the formalities was very relaxed and you felt like you were in someone's living room rather than an immigration office.
A tuk tuk took us to our very friendly and luxurious hotel. Already we could detect the more relaxed friendly manner of the Nepalese population. The first order of business was to get our Nepalese sim card active so we could book our room near Bardia Park and the whole reason we chose this obscure border crossing.