Wet Sheets....But not how you think.

Have you ever seen any of Ellen DeGeneres' stand-up? I saw her do a bit once about "the worst thing". You know how people refer to certain things as "the worst thing".....be it a paper cut, or getting unmentionable hairs caught in zippers, or losing a finger in your blender while making smoothies....

To me, one of "the worst things" is not being able to sleep. I've had many nights recently where I'm exhausted, but can do nothing to propell myself into slumber. My mind will be racing through an indistinguishable number of unpleasant things, I can't get comfortable, I'm too hot, my cat won't stop licking her ass, the motion-detector light outside won't stay off, and when I finally manage to drift off, disturbing nightmares take their course like a Twilight Zone marathon. Yes. THAT'S "the worst thing".

I was having one of these last night, and I lay there trying to convince myself that it really could be worse. I tried recalling other nights from my past that had been awful and neverending. You know where I'm going with this, right? There's a story coming.....

Years ago, while spending a summer in Nepal, I spent a very long 2 days in Chitwan National Park. Chitwan offers year-round safari excursions. A small group of us got a really good deal on a weekend trip because it was smack in the middle of Monsoon season.....the slow season for the safari industry, apparently. Getting to Chitwan was an adventure in itself. We chartered a rickety bus that drove us at extremely fast speeds up and down cliff-lined roads. After what felt like an eternity, we reached a small village backdropped by a muddy river. We were instructed to haul our belongings to the riverbank to wait for our ride. Before long, two wide canoes rowed up. Our ride, indeed. In the canoes we traveresed through crocodile-infested waters to an overgrown little island, the Chitwan Resort Island.

Don't let the word "resort" mislead you. The entire peice of land was, as I said, completely overgrown with dense jungle. There was a dining hall which, suprisingly, served excellent food unlike any other I've tasted. There were various staff/administration buildings. And along the edge of rain washed stone paths, were the guest huts, wherein the origin of my story resides. I'll get back to these later.

We arrived at Chitwan on a Friday afternoon, and the resort manager was very eager to get our adventure started. He was a plump little Indian man with a pipe cleaner mustache who, unlike the rest of the staff, spoke very clear English. He enthusiastically informed us of the wildlife we would possibly see during our stay. Rhinos, sloth bears, and tigers were all there on the island but often hid during Monsoon season....which was the reason for our cheap accomodation prices. We were all excited the the prospect of seeing such creatures, but the rest of our conversation with the manager made me more than a little nervous. I jokingly asked how likely it was that I would be mauled and eaten by a tiger during my stay. He didn't catch on that I meant it to be a joke. Being a devout Buddhist, he insisted that only the VERY lucky would ever endure such a death. He himself dreamed of dying at the mercy of an animal so that he would return as royalty in his next life. Such a death "should be prayed for, not feared", he said. This wasn't really the reassuring answer I was hoping for.

Our first activity was a hike through the jungle. We were led single-file along a dirt trail. At the beginning and at the end of the line was a guide; a young man wearing nothing but shorts and armed with nothing but a not-so-big stick. As we walked, they would stop every now and then to point out fresh, gigantic claw marks in the mud. "See? See deees? Sloth bear joost mek", one would say as he bared his teeth and dug his pretend claws into the air. This made for the most nervewracking stroll I could ever imagine. I barely reached our destination without crapping my pants. The rest of my evening was spent on the back of an obstinate elephant.....another element to this adventure which I won't elaborate on at this point.

By the time the sun went down and we retreated to our little cabin/huts, we were exhausted and filthy. We hadn't spent but a few minutes in our rooms when we arrived, so we weren't completely knowledgable of what we were in for. Our room was about 12 feet across and 15 feet long. The outside walls were constructed of screened windows from the waist up, and two twin beds were pushed up against them. A small, doorless bathroom could be entered at one end. There was no electricity, and all we had to see by was one small oil lantern.

My roomate and I took turns rinsing off under the cold showerhead....in the dark...accompanied by various lizards, frogs, and other crawlies (I even saw a tarantula and several scorpians). Alarmingly, we found that within minutes of drying off, we were drenched again. The humid jungle air was unlike anything we had experienced before. The atmosphere was so thick with moisture that it was difficult to breathe. Our belongings were so damp, we could literally ring water out of them. The rough sheets on our beds were the same way.

We sat awake for hours....talking and listening to the many sounds of wildlife just outside the windows. To my horror, the screens didn't do a tremendous job of keeping the bugs out. It was too dark to actually see what was biting my neck and inching its way up my shorts, and the not seeing was most disturbing part. We pulled our beds away from the walls so that they were joined in the center of the floor space. We thought it would possibly give us some refuge from the bugs, but we thought wrong. My roomate eventually started snoring, and I suffered through the rest of night alone. I felt as if I was lying in a vat of warm pudding. The buzzing and hissing of insects that rung in my ears was interrupted every now and then by a faint growl or moan and the rustling of tree branches. I itched so badly I worried that I would scratch holes in my skin. I was disgusted, uncomfortable, and terrified. I don't know that I've felt that close to Hell many other times in my life.

Obviously, I lived through it all. I think I even managed to sleep for 5 or 10 mintues before the sun came up. And it's always helpful to have a memory to rely on when you ask yourself "Could it possibly be any worse than this?".......because it always can be.