Riding, Riding, Riding

Our elephant ride had to be put on hold for a day. I've had a sudden relapse of my tummy trouble - or maybe it's a completely different bug. This one has given me a fever, nausea and all-over aches and pains to go with the ever-so-pleasant inconvenience of having to be never more than a quick dash from the bathroom.

We did the elephant ride first thing in the morning; that seemed to be when I felt the best, or the least worst. The ride was incredible! For two hours I almost forgot that I felt so lousy.

Riding an elephant is something I've always wanted to do. To mount the beast, we climbed to the top of a platform, and, when the elephant backed against it, stepped into his four-man box seat. John and I were alone on the ride, other than the driver (but he sat above the elephant's head). This gave us some maneuvering room and a chance to pull our feet in when the elephant went crashing through the jungle brush.

The driver banged on the elephant's head and we were off. I requested that we not do any elephant gallops; I didn't think my stomach could handle the ups and downs. As it was, the ride was bouncy. As each enormous right foot pushed forward we were tossed one way, with each left, the other. With the driver resting his bare feet on the elephant's ears and grunting commands, we headed through the Thoru village toward the community park. We were on the lookout for rhinos.

And rhinos we saw - five of them. One was bathing in a watering hole; two others were taking mud baths. A mother and her baby were grazing in a field of grasses. Seeing a rhino from the top of an elephant was a heady experience.

We got even more excitement when the driver gave the elephant commands to crash through a wooded trail. One grunt, two grunts. It must have meant something to the elephant. On command he grabbed a tree with his trunk and cracked it in half. Another grunt and he stomped it, crushing it flat. The whole thing was probably a show, but I was still impressed.

We continued through the park getting a elephant's-eye view of the foliage and insects (I must have pulled seven or eight different kinds of caterpillars off my sweatshirt). During all this stomping through trees, through rivers, through fields the elephant grabbed bundles of grass with his trunk and enjoyed his breakfast.

The ride lasted two hours and by 8:30 we were back at the hotel ready to for a jeep ride to the bus station. We were heading back to Kathmandu. I didn't feel too bad after the elephant ride but the jeep ride did me in. By time we reached the bus, I was doubled over. My condition was not exactly ideal for under taking a six hour bus ride and I wasn't relishing the few pit stops the driver would make at those four foot high out-houses. Some of them are enough to MAKE you sick if you are not already.

The bus ride was typical. This driver though might have been a descendant of Evil Knevel; we felt safer on the back of the elephant. We were breaking all speed records. My only comfort was that there was a local bus in front of us and he WAS still in front of us. But, as the local buses are usually the ones tipped over on the side of the road, this was a small comfort at best. Eventually, with blasting horn, we passed the local bus, and another, and another. We zipped around blind curves where cliffs dropped off to the raging river below. I tried to concentrate on the rafts floating in the water, hurling and dunking as they entered the rapids, like toy boats in a bathtub when they got to close to the flowing water spout.

At one point on the ride, the driver passed around a paper on which we were to sign and print our passport numbers. I wrote in big shaky letters across the top "DRIVE SLOWER" and underlined it and circled it. It didn't have the desired effect. When the paper got back to the front, the driver took his eyes from the road for an excessive amount of time while he pointed at my words and engaged in a lengthy conversation with the person beside him. When he grinned, his eyes squinted until they appeared closed, remaining in that half creased position even after he turned his head back to the windshield. Oh well, I tried. Eventually we would reach the uphill climb to Kathmandu and the bus, for lack of horsepower, would naturally slow.

By 4:30 pm we were still in one piece and entering the city limits. My condition had deteriorated and I felt the waves of a fever. I couldn't walk the three blocks to our hotel; we hired a rickshaw to get us there and we tipped the driver 10 Rs over his asking price. We felt sorry for him having to pedal both of us, two packs and a duffle bag of Tibetan carpet up the hill. The hotel porter didn't seem to mind the weigh though. He hoisted the carpet bag over his shoulder, put my pack behind his neck and reached for John's.

I spent three days in bed. I left only once to see the doctor at the clinic. We'd read horror stories of Nepalese doctors using the movement of blood to cure everything. (They draw blood from one part of your body and inject it back into another part - circulation be damned). But we relaxed when the doctor told us where she'd done her residency and studied medicine in Boston.

After a series of blood, urine and stool tests came back negative and the doctor shrugged, I concluded that I must have one of those mystery bugs, the ones that get written about in the newspapers and pinned to the clinic waiting room walls. It was up to my body to fight this one on its own.

A few more days in bed did the trick. My first indication that I was improving was that I woke up starving. I took it slowly for a another day or two. But after that I felt fine and the memory of the aches and pains faded.