the mighty jungle

Hello. It's been a while, but I have a valid excuse: we have been hunting tigers in the Terai (not shooting, you understand, just looking). We won an elephant safari in a raffle a couple of months ago. Pretty nifty prize, I thought - confidently expect to win nothing more exciting than an old box of sugared almonds in future.
Twins were distinctly underwhelmed by being out in the jungle on the back of an elephant, and spent most of the time asleep (but only after they had spent an hour or so complaining about being bored), although Twin 2 admitted that when the tiger roared it woke her up, momentarily. After the elephant safari I tried to read The Jungle Book to them (felt very chuffed and good-mother-ish that I had remembered to pack it), but they got bored and went back to some important colouring in instead. Good job we hadn't actually had to pay for them, otherwise I would have been shaking them and shouting, "This cost us a bloody fortune and YOU WILL ENJOY YOURSELVES!" (much as I remember my own parents doing when they took us to Egypt - pyramids: of passing interest; Cairo museum: about as interesting as cold pea soup).
I was thrilled to have spotted a tiger in the wild, and heard it roar, too. The only downside of the whole free elephant safari thing was the beds. They were shockingly hard, and I came back exhausted, even though all  I'd done over the weekend was sit on elephants or in jeeps or in rafts and get waited on hand, foot and finger by the very helpful staff. Maybe they just made the beds hard on purpose, just to make the guests feel as if they are roughing it a bit in the jungle.
So now we're home, kids are back at school, Hubby is back to being Kathmandu Hubby (as opposed to holiday Hubby - there is a difference) and it's raining, which doesn't bode well for my trek to Langtang next week.... will just have to hope that you don't get leeches above two thousand metres...