Chitwan 1st June 2006

I woke to the sound of an elephant clearing it’s nose! Quite a strange noise to hear at 05:00. I read in bed for a couple of hours and then listened to some music and didn’t leave my room until 10:00. I was going to have a wander around the village and get something to eat but as I was passing Dessie’s room he called out to me, I went over to see what was up. He told me that there was a Preying Mantis in his room and it had just killed the male. I’d heard the name before but didn’t know if it was a snake or a lizard. It turns out that it is a big green grasshopper type thing.

There were two of them in his room and one of them was lying dead under his bed. It turns out that the female kills the male after sex (are they never happy……..?) It was an amazing looking creature, like something out of Alien. I was able to get a really good close up shot, it was probably knackered after shagging and slaying! Dessie was busy pottering around and he’d just got some bleach and was about to dye his jeans (it’s not all sex, drugs and rock’n’roll), so I went down and got some breakfast. I sat by the river and had two poached eggs, toast and beautiful potatoes fried in garlic, onions and tomatos, washed down with a cup of coffee. I was sitting on a bench under a grassed roof canopy and there are sparrows nesting in it. So I was entertained by the parents flying back and forth with food and sitting on the back of the bench opposite me singing and chirping away. When the chick heard the parents chirping, they would stick their heads out from the top of the canopy and the mother would fly up and feed them. Dad tended to stay down keeping a careful eye on me.

Dessie turned up about half an hour later, turns out that the ‘beach’ dyed his jeans lilac! At least now they match the colour of his bike… Rick and Mo showed up, they had decided against riding back to Pakorah and were going to stay another day. We sat around chatting for hours as the sky gradually got darker and darker and the wind started picking up. Dessie was going to meet someone in the foothills so he left before the rain came down and we sat through an hour and a half long storm. At about 18:20 Oliver turns up from Kathmandu and we all sat there chatting until nearly 21:00. The sunset was pretty good, especially as it was the first time we spotted it the whole day. The sky and river turned from yellow to red before fading with the light to black.