We had a hearty breakfast from our Pokhara hotel, checked out and said a fond farewell to the owners. We rushed to the bus stop to get our bus, which wasn't easy with heavy bags and sore feet. We arrived in good time, and found our bus straight away.

Unfortunately, because we'd booked our bus late, we had no proper seats . Instead, we were put on a bench behind the driver's seat. This had no back support and we were facing backwards. We'd been told the journey would take four hours, and we set off a little late as as many people as possible were crammed into the bus. We ended up with 39 passengers in a bus with 25 passenger seats. It wasn't comfortable.

We had a couple of brief stops along the way, and the journey ended up taking five hours. We passed lots of mountainous scenery, and passed through a few large, busy towns. The weather steadily grew hotter as we approached Sauraha (the town by Chitwan National Park). When we arrived into the bus station, we ignored the touts and set off walking the kilometre or so to our lodge. We'd booked the lodge the previous night on booking.com, as it looked like a good deal. When we arrived, we were told we were the first people to receive a discount on the lodge since December 2014. Bonus. The lodge turned out to be very nice, with a beer garden, hammocks, attentive staff, reasonable prices, nice rooms and a hot shower . We were even greeted with a cold towel and a glass of orange squash.

After checking in, we went a few doors down to get some lunch. Inevitably, this took an hour to arrive. We were told that the petrol crisis meant that nowhere had any gas anymore in the region, so everywhere was relying on wood fires for cooking. We took the time to decide what activities we wanted to do, and drink tea after the long journey. We headed back to the lodge and booked our activities over the next few days, for a not unreasonable price. We also met Jenna from New Zealand, who would be joining us in some of our activities.

Jenna told us that the sunset over the nearby river the previous day had been very nice, and that she'd seen a rhino bathing in the river. On hearing this, naturally we headed off to the river immediately. We'd just missed sunset (very early at 5.25pm), and we hung around for a while to see if anything would happen. A rhino did appear in the distance, against the tree line . S/he didn't come down to the river for a bathe and shortly disappeared back into the undergrowth.

After the late lunch, we didn't feel the need for dinner so instead bought gin and lemonade and had an early night. Unfortunately, we didn't sleep well because it was cold (shocking!) and also because an occasional ant would run up and over us.

On Tuesday 27th, we had an early start and an early breakfast. When the staff asked how we'd slept and we told them, they said they would clean our room and look to move us. We headed off promptly for our first organised activity, a canoe ride down the Rapti river. This was in a narrow, low sitting traditional wooden canoe, on a misty morning. It was the two of us and Jenna, plus two guides (a little excessive) and the canoe boater. We headed downstream to see what we could see. This included gharials (critically endangered members of the crocodile family, eating only fish), marsh muggers (crocodiles and highly dangerous to people), snake birds (last seen by us in the jungle in Ecuador), herons, kingfishers, peacocks, rhesus macaque monkeys (staring meanly at us from a tree), and the most exciting thing - a rhino bathing in a bend in the river. We landed and jumped out of the boat to take a closer look. He was wallowing in the stream, and would occasionally blow bubbles. He gradually made his way up the bank and had a munch on some grass, but when he spotted us we shied away, quickly . We got within a few metres of him. It was terrifying and very exciting. On climbing back into the canoe, Ken discovered he had a leech - but only on his trousers, luckily, and not attached to his skin. This dealt with, we were underway again.

More crocs later, the canoe ride ended after an hour and a half. We landed and started our walk through the jungle. This was through a variety of terrain, including grassland where the grass was four metres high, along jeep tracks, through shaded woodland areas, and through scrub and bushes. Not around and on paths, but through. It was a hayfever sufferers worst nightmare. We had the talk of what to do if we were charged by four of the big creatures that could pose us serious danger. We saw some spotted deer running away from us, and we heard and smelt two wild boar, as well as the grass and bushes bending as they crashed away from us through the jungle. We also saw a dead snake which had been run over on the jeep path . We got scratched by the bushes as we pushed our way through. Luckily we were all wearing trousers, but long sleeved shirts were definitely in order. We walked all day, with a long stop for lunch and a couple of shorter stops. On one of the shorter stops, our guides took us up a small slope, from which we could see lots of grassland and a small lake. The guides went into the bush to do some scouting around. After a few minutes, we heard a rhino snort, very close by. We couldn't see him, but we were on edge by this. Then we turned around and saw a different rhino had emerged at the lakeside. Presently, we heard voices and the guides came back, saying that the rhino noise was him starting to charge at them. They ran away and were clearly flustered by the encounter. We watched the rhino by the lakeside for a few minutes, before heading into the scrub from which we'd heard the rhino noise.

We kept walking, through scratchy bushes, and by the end, we twigged that our guides were lost . It seemed okay, because there was another group who were also lost. After more forging of paths through bushes, we eventually emerged by the riverside, far upstream from the crossing to Sauraha. We made our way back but were a little fed up by this point, having walked at least ten miles and with very sore arms from the scratches. On the plus side, we saw an elephant bathing herself in the river, and looking like she was having a great time. Apparently she'd been sick, and whilst the medicine was taking effect, she was having some days off to recover and wander around freely.

We crossed the river on a canoe and decided to stay local to the riverside, to watch sunset. This time we managed to see it, and bought food and beer for the occasion as well. Sunset was fairly unremarkable, and as a rhino didn't appear for a bath, we headed back to the lodge for an early night. We were knackered!

On Wednesday 28th, we had another early start and a good lodge breakfast . We were walked across the road and into a government elephant compound, for our morning activity of elephant riding in the jungle! When booking the activity, we had the option of government Asian elephants - well looked after, taking a maximum of four people at a time out into the jungle of Chitwan National Park, maximum two times a day - or the other elephant ride - privately owned elephants, worked for up to six hours a day, with lots of elephants going to the same place outside of the park. The privately owned elephant ride was cheaper, but we had ethical concerns about how the elephants were treated. We opted for the government elephant ride for that reason, as well as the fact that we got to go inside the national park and therefore we had a better chance of seeing other animals.

It was a good choice. We climbed onto the elephant using a set of steps, specifically in place for that reason. The elephant was called Mancholy, and she was in absolutely no rush to do anything . We gave her trunk a stroke and set off across a river tributary and into the jungle. Mancholy decided to have a nice long drink of river water on the way. Because we were on an elephant, we could get close to other wildlife without them being scared off by people. We went through some grassland - which Mancholy enjoyed as she had a good munch on the way - and into the trees. Which was wet and mucky, as we often got trees to the face! Plus a lot of spider webs, some of which we could see coming, and others we couldn't. It was a great vantage point, being so high up, and we quickly saw some wild boar. Actually saw them this time, not just heard and smelt them. They were large. Next we saw some spotted deer, though they were still skittish and stayed at a distance. Mancholy kept up the eating on the way whenever she had a chance, and the occasional thudding noise behind us was her having a poo. Lovely and amusing for us. Towards the end, we spied a rhino lying down by a pathway. We moved a little closer to within just a few metres, and when she spotted us, her and her baby stood up to get a better look at us . It was a magical sight, as they paid us humans no attention at all, and eventually relaxed in our company. The baby laid back down with a grunt just before we moved off again.

All too soon, the elephant ride was over. We'd had a great hour and a half, and thanked Mancholy as we climbed down. We went for a look at the other elephants in the government area, who were all engaged with scratching an itch, or throwing grass onto their heads and backs. We wandered over to the other side of the area, where the male elephants, complete with large impressive tusks, were unfortunately chained up in their enclosures. We weren't sure why they were kept if they weren't used for the touristic purposes, and it was a little sad to see.

Before leaving the area, we went into a small museum on the wildlife of the area. It was filled with badly stuffed and badly preserved animals - not exactly what we were expecting. This included a leopards skin and foetuses of various animals, as well as the critically endangered gharial, turtles shells, birds, skulls, fecal matter, elephants trunk and tail, and snake skeleton . It was a little creepy.

We headed back across the road to our ideally located lodge to relax with coffee and an early lunch, before preparing for our next afternoon activity; a jeep safari. We joined a couple of others and headed down to the river bank, took a canoe across, and walked to the edge of the forest. Here, ten of us plus our guide climbed into our jeep, and headed off into the bush. Over the course of the afternoon we saw four rhinos, plenty of spotted deer, several wild boar, and some government elephants. Plus plenty of parakeets, cranes and a crested eagle. We stopped at a crocodile breeding centre, focused on the critically endangered gharials. They had a yearly breeding programme going, with over 200 gharials inside. Mostly these were young, meaning that, when old enough, they would be released into the wild. The breeding centre also had turtles, who would poke their heads up through the green slime in their pond, making them look rather unusual .

Of the rhinos, the first was eating it's way through a thicket. So much so that at first we could only see an ear, but by the time we moved away, we could see the whole animal bar it's legs. The second was also munching away in a thicket, though it was much more visible. The third and fourth were another mother and baby, who were having a bathe in one of the lakes we passed by. The way back was incredibly dusty. We were very dirty by the time we reached the river bank again. Unfortunately, we saw no big cats, sloth bears or wild elephants in our time in the park. However we figured we were incredibly lucky to have seen nine rhinos and all of the other wildlife we'd spotted.

We had a great hot shower back at the lodge, had dinner and enjoyed the evening having a nice chat with some of the others staying at the lodge.

On Thursday 29th, we went to see the elephant bathing. This was a daily activity and was usually very popular. People went to see the elephants get washed, and to be washed themselves by the elephants. Unfortunately, it was raining, and quite cold (comparatively). There were a few people who braved the water and went for an elephant dunk, but most people, like us, stayed huddled at the water's edge, wondering why noone got attacked by the marsh muggers. We didn't like the metal hooks that were used on the elephant's ears, to control them whilst people were on them . So we wandered a little further down the bank to see an elephant actually being washed. This was by a man kneeling on her head, and another using a stone to scrub her clean. We first approached when he was scrubbing the inside of her ear, which to us looked very painful. The elephant didn't seem to mind it, or the rest of her being scrubbed with the stone. This time, there was no crowd, and the cleaning of the elephant was genuinely to clean the elephant - not to throw tourists into the muddy waters of the Rapti river. We braved the rain for about half an hour before heading back to the lodge for a relaxed afternoon, and started planning some of our later adventures across South East Asia.

Though we ordered lunch in good time, it was very late in arriving. Which meant we were late for our afternoon activities. We decided not to go to a museum about the local population's culture and traditions, and headed straight for the Elephant Breeding Centre. We hired bikes (Phoenix and Femina, our trusty steeds) and cycled the four or so kilometres there, along flat but bumpy, stone-filled paths . This meant we actually cycled through Sauraha town - something we'd only seen the outskirts of previously. We hadn't missed much.

On arriving at the Elephant Breeding Centre, we took a boat across the river, and headed in. There was noone at the kiosk to pay, so we hung out in the attached museum and waited for someone to arrive, which they did presently. We walked past a number of enclosures, with young elephants, or mothers with calfs. There wasn't much else to see, so we contented ourselves with watching their behaviour for a while. Several were rocking - though not to scratch an itch this time - and some eyed us carefully. The calfs were a mixture of shy and brave, with some getting as close as they dared to the electrified fence to get a better look at us. The cutest was the smallest calf there; who we watched for some time as s/he struggled to use their trunk to get food into their mouth. Awwww. There was plenty of trumpetting as well.

We cycled back, returned the bikes, and had a late dinner as lunch had been so late. We got stuck talking to a crazy Aussie guy, who, whilst not unpleasant, said some displeasing things. We went to bed as soon as we could.

On Friday 30th, we checked out, and said a slightly emotional goodbye to the staff at the lodge. They had been so lovely during our stay, and seemed genuinely worried about the continued impact of a lack of tourists following the April and May 2015 earthquakes. We were driven in a jeep to the bus stop, and the staff waved goodbye as we climbed on board.

Next stop - back to Kathmandu!