We left Jasper® & Socket™ waiting for Katmandu to catch up to them, or something upside down like that. Our itinerary now took us out of the city, across a mountain range, and into a steep Himalayan valley hosting the Trisuli river and our raft journey to Chitwan National Park.
On one of our riverside stops, Old Babette had an epiphany of immortal youth, had lost or run out of her lithium actually, and after being fished out of a riverside eddy and narrow brush with death that did not even register in her mind, with wet dress clinging to her thin body, began dancing; imagining herself a siren from the Coen Brothers’ ‘Ulysses.’
She was taken into protective custody by the Montana dyke whose ability to impart reality was better than any anti-psychotic medication. A few short words suffice to explain: This dyke ‘lady’ from Basin, Montana, was veteran of a war that is legend. The derelict Montana mining town of Basin was the preferred habitat of an artist community with a fairly large percentage of lesbians. The town’s bikers didn’t behave in respect to the lesbians and after awhile, when push came to shove, the lesbians pushed the bikers out of town. The Montana dyke was along as an insurance policy-enforcer in the original Montana libertarian style; be as crazy as you please, but don’t cross a line. Old Babette decided to behave.
We camped overnight at the confluence of the Trisuli & Kaligandeki rivers on a sandy spit across from the Devghat temple. We had no idea what the temple was across the river. The ‘Bandit Sister’ and myself swam over to investigate and upon entering the temple grounds, we saw crocodile effigies! “Oh shit!!” was the reaction on realizing we had come so far into the lowlands that we’d entered this creature’s territory and would now have to swim back. I swam on my back returning to the camp, maybe not so much because it is quiet but because I wouldn’t see a croc coming, if that was to happen. Perhaps the water wasn’t seasonally warm enough, for them to be up the river to where we were.
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My Madcap Adventure (all episodes)
