Lovely Travel Stories

August 18th, 2005 * Comments(0)

 The Thorn Tree is always interesting to read.

Today I found  another collection of awesome* travel stories.

I crept along a narrow path–definitely not the one I had taken to get there (again, major DUH) and was about to step onto another stone which I could faintly see was darker than the last. Something made me stop and throw a pebble at the rock–which turned out to be not a rock but TREETOPS–and the pebble hit the ground maybe 15 or 20 meters below.

It was right about then that I experienced a classic “Bugs Bunny Moment” (you know, when Bugs and Elmer Fudd run off the edge of a cliff and suddenly stop in mid-air with that “What are we DOING?” look on their faces). From where I was feebly clinging to the cliff face, it occured to me that it was an extremely long way down.

ohh, what an incredibly familiar feeling

Mistake2 (on way out).
Took wrong trail. Waaaaaaaay below me I could see two small tarns (very small lakes) on a ridge
that I had passed earlier. I knew if I could get to these two tarns, I could pick up trail out.
As I bushwacked down a very steep mountainside on “all sixes”, (two hands, two knees, two feet)
I heard…

CONVERSATION!!!???

I inquired…

“Where the F__ are you guys????”

Reply:

“Uhhhh…we’re on the trail.”

As it turned out I had been descending a desperate route with the trail just feet away.

I followed these hikers out.

Moral: Hmmmmmm…nothing too lofty…but something along the lines of:

“THINK…BEFORE you f__k up!!!”

Here’s another one which had obviously sunk below the horizon of consciousness, but was dredged up by the tales of hippos and baboons above. I was staying at a camp in the Chitwan National Park in southern Nepal which is famous for its bengal tigers, elephants and white asian rhinos. There were two ways you could do a safari, from the lofty security of the howdah on an elephant’s back (cost a little more) or in a group on foot with guides as trackers (cost a little less). Guess which one I picked? Correct.

So having crossed the river in small boats we entered the dense thickets of bamboo and scrub on foot in search of white rhinos. Our guides briefed us very clearly. There were definitely rhino about but some were females with young. These could be aggressive and charge at great speed. So if one of them shouted “Run!” we were to leg it as fast as we could and climb the nearest tree.

We all crept around in a group for a while. Needless to say the command “Run!” was suddenly shouted. Half the group ran into one another, slipping in the mud and falling into a slapstick pile. It was a false alarm. Ten minutes later we were signalled and a rhino mother and its baby were pointed out to us. Suddenly the mother charges and we fled helter skelter. I had never climbed a tree in my entire life. I was twice the age of the youngsters in the group and I was first up the tree and hanging on for dear life when Mrs Hippo hit that tree. I can still feel the thumping whooosh of adrenalin now….

enough for now

“If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.” – the theme song from Jackass I believe

*while these stories probably act as a travel deterrent to most people I find their influence on me is basically the other way around. I get inspired, this is what traveling is all about. Life would be boring otherwise.

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