Back to Nepal: Wild Reunion

13 months after departing Nepal, leaving my love, my Nepali family, and much of my heart behind, a dream came true: I got to come back.

Read on to learn how my first two weeks back in Nepal have been after spending a year growing re-accustomed to life in my U.S. home.

Reading time: 15 minutes

It is with deep gratitude that I am writing this post from my second home of Dang, Nepal, right next to my partner.  We successfully navigated over a year of a long distance relationship, never missing a single day for a video call.  I think that everything we have been through in our >2 years together has just brought us closer - despite about half of our relationship being on opposite sides of the globe.  It is a treat to be back together physically, to say the least!

Views of the Himalayas and Kathmandu as I arrived in Nepal for the second time.

I am so fortunate that my job in the US allows me to take a 2.5 month break each summer.  I work in an elementary school as the Extended Care Director, a full-time position in which I supervise K-8 kiddos for their lunches, recesses, and after school.  I love my job, and I also love the fact that I am able to spend 2 months in Nepal before I return to it in the fall!

Now, what we've all been waiting for...

Finally, I am back with Sanam, my love.

We spent our first day reunited in Bouddha, a Buddhist community I adore in Kathmandu.  When I left Nepal in May 2021, the country was in severe lockdown, so I was unable to show Sanam this place that I had fallen in love with in December 2019.  Now, we got to enjoy Bouddha together in its full glory.  The joy I felt of being reunited with my honey was only expanded by being in a place that I also love so much!

On day 2, we headed home to Dang, a province in Mid-West Nepal (about 12 hours drive from Kathmandu when the road isn't flooded out).  Because I had already traveled 30 hours from Los Angeles to Kathmandu (KTM), and because the flooded road caused Sanam's driving journey from Dang to KTM to take 15 hours, I made the call that we should fly part of the way!  It was Sanam's first time on an airplane, which was great to experience together.  We took a 30 minute flight to Gautam Buddha Airport, a drive that would have taken 10-12 hours with the poor road conditions.  One 3 hour bus ride later, we arrived in Dang, home at last!

I was greeted by an incredible sight: our house, finished, gorgeous, concrete, painted, weather-proof, and SO fancy for the village.  

(To see the mud house we used to live in, where I spent over 7 months between 2020-2021, watch the video here.  I loved that house and that experience, but WOW it is nice to have an indoor bathroom with running water, and for the roof to not fall in when it rains!)

Sanam designed this house completely by himself.  When I left, the bones of the first 2 stories were done but bare; now, it is a 2.5 story home with a huge living room, a kitchen, an indoor bathroom, and 3 bedrooms.  The layout, style, and paint colors are so unique for the village.  Everyone told him it wouldn't look good, but now they all want to copy him!

This is our bedroom, the top story.  It has huge windows on 3 walls with awe-inspiring views.

This is the view from right outside our bedroom!

The bathroom features a massive shower head, a bedet, a squat toilet, and some of the most beautiful printed tiles I've ever seen.

I can't forget to share about the sweet reunions with our dog and buffalo!  The baby on the right is new to me but trusted me right away, I think because his mom remembered me and was so comfortable with me.

Sanam and I spent some days in Dang, splitting time between family, friends, strolling, and our favorite: picnics!  He got to try some snacks I brought him from the US.  Peanut butter is his number 1, followed by a marshmallow peanut churro roll and then Tootsie Rolls.

We journeyed to the capital city of Dang to get some motorcycle repairs, where we visited this beautiful restaurant, great for a photo-op!

Fun fact: it is the end of summer/start of monsoon season here, and the heat & humidity are INTENSE.  Most days are mid-nineties with 60-90% humidity, making the "feels like" temperature usually between 106-111°F.  We still do our best to enjoy our time!  Above, you can see Sanam trying PB with apple for the first time.  Strong thumbs up.

I got to witness the rice planting season, a few day-long period when every village resident is working hard in the paddies to plant rice by hand before monsoon season starts.  They work literally all day and all night, then for weeks they have no work while they just wait for the rice to grow!

After a week at home, we decided to go on an adventure we had been dreaming of... to the jungles of far west Nepal!

Trip to the Jungle

Sanam and I had talked about taking a trip to far west Nepal when I returned, a region that he explored a lot this year due to a new close friend who lives there.  His friend's place (called Nepalgunj) is about halfway between our home and Bardiya National Park, our ultimate destination.  We chose to first stay the night in the shockingly fancy Nepalgunj!

On the way, I loved looking into the jungle.  There is always such an exciting possibility for wildlife sightings... (foreshadowing!)

We saw a wild fox in the jungle on our way!  It was the size of a coyote.

3 hours later, we arrived in Nepalgunj, extremely hot and sunburned and ready to cool off.  Fortunately, we had a plan to do something I've never had the opportunity for in Nepal: we got to visit an incredible resort and swim in a swimming pool!!

This hotel/water park, called Mero Planet (my planet), is one of the fanciest resorts in far west Nepal.  I felt like we had stepped into another universe here!

It was seriously so beautiful.  And I kid you not, they had the largest swimming pool that I've ever seen anywhere.  I couldn't get a good photo of it, but it is about the size of 2 competition pools side by side, and only 4' deep everywhere.

Our friend, named Sandip, took some gorgeous photos for us on his iPhone 11.   It's moments like this when I realize how different the quality is for photos from my 5 year old iPhone 7, which has made 4 trips to Asia (and I still love it!).

It was a very cool experience to swim here.  Everyone is given an outfit for swimming, so it is a uniform amount of skin exposed - a happy thing for me, as SO many people were staring at me at all times anyway.  It was 98% men in the pool, and they were definitely making me and Sanam uncomfortable by staring at me so much.  I guess they're not used to foreigners in far west Nepal!

 We enjoyed finally feeling cooled off and then left for our next destination.

The "cool" feeling didn't last long, haha!

After some time spent at our friend's home (with AC, a GIFT), we visited a beautiful Hindu temple.

This is us with Sandip and his girlfriend.  Double date!

We rang the bells, donated small amounts, and received tika, a blessing of red powder/dry rice on the forehead.

Feeling blessed.

For dinner, we went to Siddhartha View Hotel, an 8 story building with an incredible view of Nepalgunj.

We enjoyed chilled cranberry juice in wine glasses (Sandip, his girlfriend and I don't drink alcohol) and a variety of foods, including pizza, western style!

The next day, Sanam and I headed out early for Bardiya National Park, 2 hours drive away.

On longer drives like this, we are typically stopped a few times by traffic cops, who check all drivers for their license and registration.  The cops always inquire about me; where am I from, is Sanam my tour guide, do I like Nepal, etc.  These cops liked me so much that they took Sanam's phone number and wanted to take a selfie together!

Finally, we arrived to Bardiya National Park, one of the largest, most undisturbed, and most biologically diverse national parks in Nepal.  There are an estimated 640+ faunal species living here!  Including...

Crocodiles and gharials (pictured), tortoises and turtles, Gangetic dolphins, monkeys, peacocks, barasingha deer,  spotted deer, leopards, Indian elephants, greater one-horned rhinoceroses, and Bengal tigers.

LOOK at those teeth on this gharial!

Sanam had been to Bardiya recently; he arrived at 4PM and right away saw elephants and a rhino.  We assumed that they were here all the time, but we were wrong!  As it turns out, they take these massive mammals for a jungle stroll every day from morning until 4PM.  I'm so glad that they do this; it's wonderful that the animals get to experience that freedom every day!

This didn't work in our favor, though.  We had felt so clever arriving at 11AM until we learned that we had 5 hours to kill before the animals we hoped to see would arrive.  And we were in one of the hottest/most humid places in Nepal.  On the hottest day of the week.  Oof.

We saw crocodiles and monkeys and then decided to leave the park for a few hours to try to cool off.  We found a place with a small fan and got some food there.  Sanam got chicken dal bhat (lentils/rice) and I got an omelette with paratha (potato in a wheat wrap).  I could barely eat; I was pouring sweat and couldn't cool down.  Not a great feeling.

Honestly, we both felt pretty miserable at this point.  We still had about 2 hours before the animals would arrive.  Sanam and I were desperately looking for any way to cool off.

My saving grace: we found a store with a fridge and bought a cold water bottle there.  Sanam held it on my neck and wrists to cool my body temperature, and it worked!  This day was by far the sweatiest day of my life, by the way.  No exaggeration.

We decided to go back to the park now that it was afternoon, to try to see some monkeys in the shade and enjoy the distraction they may bring.

It totally worked.  Once we started watching the sweet monkeys frolicking about, we were mesmerized and enjoyed so much.

We probably saw around 50 monkeys, including so many babies!

I was still hot, but so much happier.  The monkeys behaved so similarly to humans!  What amazing cousins we have.

There was a swimming pool set up, in which the monkeys seemed to have endless fun.  They would chase and splash each other, jump off the bridge into the water, and play tag games!  See the airborne sweetheart in the right photo?  Ready to splash!

Time passed wonderfully this way.  Around 3:30, we went to where the elephants/rhino were supposed to arrive.  We needed to leave the park by 5:00 in order to meet the 6:00 curfew for driving in the jungle, and it was nearing 4:30 with no sign of the megafauna.  We decided to look into the neighboring jungle...

...and we were so lucky to see some gorgeous spotted deer!  The deer turned to look toward the elephant enclosure as Sanam said, "Honey, I see one!!"  We hurried to watch the arrival of...

...3 gorgeous Indian elephants.  They were being ridden by their handlers and then were promptly chained, both of which made me very sad, but what to do?  At least they aren't chained all the time, right?  I sent some loving kindness to them, and we enjoyed watching them cool off by spraying dirt onto their backs.

Sanam's favorite animals are elephants, so it was very fun for me to watch him admiring them.

Cutie!

Then, my favorite moment happened.

We went back to see if the deer were still there, and we noticed a tree shaking a lot.  I thought the tree was moving too much for just a bird or a deer...

...lo and behold, an incredible Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros emerged from the brush.

It walked directly toward us, slow and majestic.  Tears came to my eyes the moment I saw it.  (We don’t know for sure the sex of the rhino, but we think it is a boy, so I will refer to him as "he.")

At first, I felt afraid.  We were separated by a stone wall, but I still felt like if he wanted to, he could peek over and be aggressive.  I quickly understood, though, that this rhino was very used to humans and only embodied peace.  We were standing near his grass pile, so we got to watch him munch away on his afternoon snack.

I felt a deep connection with him right away.  I was so inspired by him.

We watched him being bitten by a huge fly, following which he bled.  He was completely undisturbed by this and continued peacefully eating.  I learned from him to not fret too much about little body disturbances like bug bites, cuts, and rashes, which I usually tend to over-worry about.

Here are some facts about his species.

I treasure this moment that my love and I got to spend with such a beautiful being. 

I think I will never forget this blissful moment.

Making eye contact with this beautiful megaherbivore, I cried so much.  Tears of joy and sadness and connection.  I felt like I lived the life of a rhino, saw so many rhinos fall prey to human poachers to the point of endangerment, sensed the resilience of the species and the hope in the conservation efforts such as the establishment of this national park.  It is hard to explain how much I know: I am this rhino and this rhino is me.  There has not been a moment when we have not inter-been.

It was now 5:00, so we had to go.  I said goodbye and took one last photo of my friend's armored back as we departed, thrilled that we had the privilege of seeing everything we had hoped to.

On our drive back to Nepalgunj, we got so lucky to see wild spotted deer in the jungle, as well as an unpictured wild boar!

We stopped to stretch our legs at the side of the road, where a group of children out grazing their pet goats came to say hello.  They were thrilled to find out that I spoke Nepali, so I could communicate with them!  They were so sweet and wanted to take a photo.  What a darling memory.

That evening, we arrived back to Nepalgunj, where our friend Sandip informed us that he had booked us a super fancy hotel room at none other than Mero Planet, the resort with the pool!

This hotel room came equipped with a western toilet, AC, a mega-plush bed, a water heater for coffee, a TV, and pretty much all of the amenities a hotel in the U.S. would have.  I was shocked and felt so spoiled!

We had some roti (bread), lentils, and paneer curry for dinner and then Sanam and I went to bed, the happiest campers.  It was our first night together sleeping with AC out of our 14+ months together in person!  He was so cold, poor thing.  We definitely enjoyed the treat of feeling cold, though!

In the morning, we enjoyed coffee with a beautiful view.

We then had the coolest experience: we got to swim in the pool with NO ONE ELSE THERE.  NO creepy men staring at me!!!  This was divine.  What a gift.

We checked out and went to Barahsinghe, Sanam's favorite restaurant in Nepalgunj.  I was enjoying the ability to eat something other than rice (in Nepal, every single meal is rice and curry), so I again got roti and eggs.  Sanam shared his vegetables with me, too.  Our friend also got hookah.

This is us with our friend, Sandip!  Barah means 12 and singh means horns, so naturally we had to don the restaurant's namesake for this photo.

This ends our trip to Nepalgunj!  We left for Dang, and on the way...

...yes, that's right, I saw a huge cat in the jungle.  It was either a large leopard or a small tiger.  I was freaking out with joy and excitement and a little fear. What a lucky sighting!

Thank you for joining me for the first 2 weeks of my time back in Nepal.  Time to again enjoy the present moments with my love!

Until next time, xoxo from Nepal.

🇳🇵🦏