ENTHUSIAST ’ S CORNER
Ralf Kurz CONTRIBUTORS
On a Rhino Safari with Buddha Air
A wild Indian rhinoceros trots leisurely along a busy street in the small town of Sauraha , in the south of Nepal . For the locals , this is just normal life but , for tourists , it ’ s a surprising encounter that they had not dared to dream of before .
THE REASON IS THE ADJACENT Chitwan National Park , which extends over 932km2 ( 360 square miles ). Founded in 1973 , this was the first protected nature reserve in the country . Along with the Kathmandu Valley and the city of Pokhara in the west , the starting point for big trekking tours , it is the most important tourist attraction in Nepal .
You can take a tour on foot , in a boat , on a jeep , or riding on an elephant . But it is only from the back of a pachyderm that one can , with a lot of luck , spot one of the rare Bengal tigers . The obviously more harmless Indian rhinos , on the other hand , take a shortcut right through the city center on their way to the banks of the East Rapti , the local river .
But how do you get to Chitwan National Park as an individual traveler ? Specialist operators do offer complete travel packages where participants don ’ t have to worry about a thing . But such programs are extremely expensive and usually involve large groups . What if you would rather organize everything yourself ?
As far as Nepal is concerned , the visa-onarrival procedure sounds good at first . Who feels comfortable entrusting the postal service to safely carry their passport between their home and the embassy weeks in advance ? It would appear to be better to pay the visa fee in dollars on arrival , and have the formalities completed in a few moments . At least that is the idea for countries the economies of which are particularly dependent on tourism , such as popular destinations in the Persian Gulf region . There , the digitalized entry and exit processes take just seconds , without the need to see an official . No visitor should lose even a minute when they could be spending their money in gigantic shopping malls .
This is not the case at Kathmandu International Airport . Quite the opposite ; the visa payment process is a complicated one . The main obstacle is represented by the so-called visa kiosk , which resembles a simple ticket counter . After you feed it with a lot of personal data , it will hopefully spit out a registration number , which you absolutely need to present at a special counter to pay your fee . After two hours of battling with the dreaded device , you then can move on quickly to passport control .
I would probably never have made it to the baggage claim without the help of a Nepalese expert , who was constantly moving between the machines to support annoyed arrivals . Meanwhile ,
16 AIRWAYS MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2024 www . airwaysmag . com