Betana

There are many people that walk in and out of the clinic on a fairly regular basis and one of these is a young boy called Nakul Karki. We were talking with him about local wildlife and he seemed very surprised that we had never seen tortoises and so he took us on a trip to see them at Betana, a park near to Bhaunne.

Before we went into the park we bought two packets of crisps to feed this fish. I'm sure an environmentalist wouldn't be too pleased if they realised it is fairly normal for the children here to buy oily crisps and throw them into the river to attract the fishes and tortoises. The animals themselves, however, seemed fairly happy as for each crisp many fish came to the surface to fight over it. There were fish of all sizes, but some of them can grow pretty big - they were over a foot long and apparently can weight over 3kg!

Among the fish there appeared a tortoise, that seemed very serene among the mad fight for each crisp. Apparently some of the tortoises around here can reach up to 40kg, which this one certainly wasn't, but it was very graceful among the grappling fish.

Betana is a very peaceful place and there is also a lake where you can hire a boat for Rs100 (less than a pound) to row around. It was very warm in the sunshine and it was lovely to idle around the lake for a while and it was a good way to spend the afternoon. I think it was partly nice as we were totally off the main tourist trail and so there were no other foreigners there. That is one of the joys of living in a community rather than visiting, as you are able to visit places that locals know about but that tourists often miss.For the Nepalis there I think we were as much of a novelty as the park itself and I think we are the subject of a few of the photos taken by people visiting that day.