Oh, hello Mount Everest! My First few Adventures in Nepal

I made my way to Chitwan National Park in Nepal, in hopes of seeing a wild tiger. The tiger population in the park has been doing well over the last few years because of Nepal's zero tolerance policy on poaching, which is great news! But there are still only around 150 there, where there used to be thousands. My friends and I took a safari through the grasslands and forests to see what we could see...

 



This Rhino popped out of the forest to say hi... aka charge the jeep!!

 

The Rhinos here only have one horn, unlike the African ones which have two.

 

We also saw a few buffalo

 

Common Langur

 

 



Peacock in a tree

 

Mating dance!

There were no tiger sightings, but we saw 8 Rhinos in one day which was very lucky I think! We took a canoe through the park as well, mostly for birdwatching. But about 5 minutes into the trip, I looked down into the crystal clear shallow water, and my mouth dropped open in shock as I saw a giant crocodile swimming directly under our little wooden canoe! It couldn't have been more than 2 feet below us! We kind of forgot about the birds since we saw about 20 big fat crocodiles in the water and along the banks of the river on our hour long cruise!!

Linda in the back is really excited about the crocs!

There were actually tons of great birds around, like this stork

and this Grey headed fish eagle

The next stop was the foothills of the Himalayas. We woke up early, and made our way to watch the sunrise at the Annapurna range.

This view is worth a 5 am wake up call.

 

We had to have our chai tea!! (my new addiction!)

 

I even spotted a flock of those birds from Planet Earth that are the only ones able to fly over the Himalayas -
the Bar Headed Goose.

 

My wonderful group!

The next day we got up early again for a sunrise flight to see Mount Everest! We took a little Yeti Airlines plane to the highest point in the world.

Boarding time

Flight over the Himalayas from Kathmandu

 

My selfie with Mount Everest! Too bad you can't really see it... lol

 

This is Mount Everest! It was so cool that it was the only peak that had blowing snow at the top.
Can you imagine all the climbers up there?

 

Haha, they gave us a certificate for successfully viewing Mount Everest!!! I think that's pretty funny, but still, it was amazing to see it's peak popping out above the rest of the earth, highlighted by a cloud of blowing snow above all the other peaks. It was pretty magical.