Weekly Travel Feature

Nepal 's Wild Terai, Rhino in The Bush and Charging Tigers

Prepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International

Let it not be said that adventure is dead. If one has doubts, visit the Terai in southern Nepal. Last week I mentioned about one-horn rhinos we saw in the bush in the Chitwan game reserve. This week it’s all about tigers in the Bardia National Park in western Nepal.

It was a long drive by bus across the Terai in the south of Nepal to reach Bardia National Park, the final destination for writer Robin Dannhorn and me. Bardia National Park, until recently, was the Royal Bardia National Park and on most maps and travel brochures it still goes by that name. Bardia is open for visitors, unlike the Chitwan which is closed to visitors until new government’s leases with the park concessions, like Tiger Tops, can be renegotiated. The reason is that Karnali Lodge and the Karnali Tented Camp are located on the fringe of the park and not within it.

The park was gazetted in 1976 as the Royal Kamali Wildlife Reserve. In 1984 it was extended on its eastern border bringing the reserve to 968 sq. km (374 sq. miles). This became Royal Bardia National Park in 1988. Today it’s simply the Bardia National Park.

The Geruwa River, the eastern branch of the great Karnali River which diverges into two main channels and many islands, forms the park's western boundary. The park extends east to the Nepalganj-Surkhet road and includes a large portion of the beautiful Babai River Valley, bounded by two parallel ranges of the Siwalik Hills.

Tiger Mountain operates the only concessions in Bardia; the Karnali Lodge, set amid the fascinating Tharu villages on the edge of the forest, and the Karnali Tented Camp on the banks of the river downstream from Chisapani. Several simple, native-style lodges are clustered around the park headquarters at Thakurdwara. Most visitors fly to Nepalganj, one-and-a-half hours from Kathmandu, then make the three-hour drive to the park. Robin and I made the drive from Chitwan all the way to Bardia by local bus in 10 hours through memorable and scenic stretches of the Terai.

The main appeal of Royal Bardia National Park is that it’s one of the best places on the subcontinent to see the Royal Bengal tiger in the wild. West Nepal supports the kingdom's second largest population of this magnificent cat after Chitwan. It is thought that around 50 breeding adults are distributed from Banke through Bardia and Kailai into Kanchanpur. A few leopards live on the forest edges.

The Kamali Lodge came as an unexpected surprise, actually a cultural experience. It was built appropriately from local materials––elephant grass reeds plastered over with a mixture of mud and cow dung––decorated in the style of the Tharu native villages. It blends in perfectly with its surroundings. It has twelve double-room native huts with attached bathrooms. Beds are draped with mosquito nets. The central dining area with its high vaulted ceiling is the main attraction where everyone gathers, except for breakfast. The morning meal is served on the lawn facing the lodge.

It was here in the dining room that Robin and I met Rim Din, a naturalist who was to be our guide for the next few days. We asked Rim Din what were our chances of seeing tiger. We were aware that the park boasts of some 70 tiger sighting in the past year. Three-quarters of all tiger viewings were from elephant-back, and many of those were tigers sunning themselves on the riverbanks. But sightings on elephant back don’t discount tiger being seen from vehicles and boats and on walks. However, if we wanted to see tigers, Rim Din assured us we would. I didn’t realize then the extent to which he would go to prove his point.
I really have to admire Rim Din. He is truly a man of the jungle and could well be a fictional character from the pages of Rudyard Kipling, but he is not fiction. He’s real as they come. At a robust 52 years of age, he started working for the park in 1987. Has he encountered tiger before? So many times he couldn’t even being to count them. He was born in the Terai and can trace his family back to four or five generations. He has four brothers, and no sisters, and comes from a family not of jungle trackers but herbalists. “My grandfather was an herbalist; my father was an herbalist; and I became an herbalist,” he proudly said. How did he come to know the jungle then? By chasing down wild plants in the forests. Encountering wild animals were part of the game, he explained.

Rim Din has been collecting data for years on herbal cures for diseases and ailment and is prepared to write a book about it, as soon as he can find a publisher. He claims he can cure diabetes, reduce cholesterol and even end heart fibulation. His claims as an herbalist are interesting enough but it’s his tales of jungle lore that fascinated Robin and me.

There’s a famed photograph on the wall in the main lounge of a huge wild elephant in the bush. His tusks are so large they appear to drag on the ground. Rim Din knew him well. “I saw him many times,” he said. “He was huge, the biggest elephant we had ever seen in Nepal.”

“And where is he today?” I asked, wondering if we might meet him in the jungle.
“He’s disappeared,” Run Din said. “It’s been two years since we have seen him.” When I asked what might be the cause he replied, “Maybe poachers.”
His knowledge of tigers was most interesting, and we leaned things we wouldn’t find in textbooks. Tigers give berth from two to six cubs. Mortality is very high. Mothers have to go out and hunt for food for her cubs, and when she does, her cubs are in danger of being killed, even by the male tiger that fathered them. Male cubs are a threat to him. Tigers breed throughout the year. Cubs go on their own after two years and the mother is ready to breed again. A full grown male dominates a territory of about 40 sq km.

The next morning at the crack of dawn we awoke to a clear sky. Unlike Chitwan where the overcast hangs low over the forest in the morning, Bardia is clear and the air is fresh. Ran Din met us in the lounge. He had a smile on his face that hardly masked his intent to show us tiger. He led us to the elephant stand, and there already backed into position was Soma Kali. Like her counterpart that we rode in Chitwan, she too was about 35 years old and her mahout, Hitlal, had been with her for more than 20 years. If any elephant was experienced with tigers it was Soma Kali. She had been mauled three times by charging tigers.

The news we heard that morning wasn’t too cheerful. A Tharu native had been killed by a tiger while fishing along a riverbank, and another man, while attempting to ward off a wild elephant that had crossed from the reserve and was approaching his village, was stomped to death by the wild beast. Ran Din explained that they would have to go after the tiger since he was now considered a man-eater.
These thoughts were heavy on our minds as we rode off into the bush seated on a howdah astride Soma Kali’s back. We were joined by two other elephants; one carried two English gentlemen and the other an Englishman and his wife.
We crossed the snow-fed waters of Karnali River and entered the reserve. Ran Din, who stood on Soma Kali’s rump while holding on to the back of the howdah with one hand, pointed out with his other hand to the soft earth with tracks of deer and rhino. He could tell the spotted deer from the samber deer. He knew the jackal from the hyena. We followed one set of tracks, which Ran Din said was pig and, sure enough, a little further ahead we flushed out a pig that quickly scampered away through the under brush. Ran Din identified the tracks of gharial and marsh mugger crocodiles on a riverbank, both of which Robin and I had seen on our way to the park. It was an exciting moment to see a gharial for they are rare, a vanishing species found only in Bardia. We came upon rhino wallows in which the rhino had obvious fled upon hearing us approach. Ran Din could name the species of monkeys, Langur and Rhesus, that swung from branch to branch in the heavy foliage above, causing a ruckus and giving us away, and when he spotted vultures low in the sky he knew an animal kill had been made and was near at hand. It was best to skirt these fresh kills.

When we came to tiger tracks Ran Din studied them carefully, and then gave directions to the other mahout to scatter out. As the elephants slouched through the heavy thickets, Ran Din signaled that we all had to be still, no talking or shouting. We came to one particularity dense clump of brush and now Soma Kali began to tremble, ever so lightly. She then stopped, taking a step backwards. At this, our mahout dug his heels deep behind the elephant’s ears, again and again, and at the same time began striking her harshly upon head with his metal rod, forcing her to go forward. It was a tense moment. The other two elephants had backed off, their mahouts attempting to force them to move forward. They stood fast.
Soma Kali, against her will, edged forward, reluctantly. Suddenly came the most god-awful sounds that struck fear into every one of us, man and beast alike. It was the terrifying roar of an enraged tiger and the screaming and trumpeting of a frightened elephant, along with the frightful crashing of scrub trees and reeds. Then, as sudden as lightening strikes, in one flying leap, the tiger charged. Debris flew in every direction. But as sudden as the tiger struck, Soma Kali was prepared. Her trunk went up, she reared and fell back. My immediate response was one of relief; we had escaped being mauled by a tiger. But that was not the case. The fight was not over. Our mahout drove Soma Kali back into the thicket. I could feel the animal quivering beneath us, but she was defiant now, ready again to face her adversary full on. She charged into the thicket.

The tiger let out another terrifying growl but this time she withdrew only to come out of the bush to face the other two elephants. I could plainly see the two Englishmen on the elephant closest to us. They held tightly with their hands to the cross bar of the howdah, and upon their faces was the look of terror. The tiger appeared briefly in the open and then hastily vanished into the forest. We heard her now growl in the distance.

Ran Din surmised that she had cubs she was protecting. Perhaps they were still in the bush and she was attempting to lead us away in pursuing her. There was no need. We all had enough tigers for one day. We had a lot to talk about in the lodge that evening. Those sounds, a tiger and an elephant facing one another, is one that none of us can ever forget.

On our last day Robin and I were up at 0545 and did our last elephant safari. We were hoping to see rhino and perhaps wild elephant but without luck. It didn’t matter. We were at peace in the jungle. We saw many spotted deer and pig and several species of monkeys. But more than animals it was the forest itself that captured our spirit. It was beautiful, primeval. The tress and brush were heavy with dew and the sun filtered down through pencil-thin shafts of light through dense foliage. Great trailing vines reached to the tops of the tallest trees. Our gallant elephant sloshed though mud swamps and across rivers and streams. We climbed riverbanks that appeared at a glance to be impossible but the sure-footed elephant climbed like a mountain goat. She drank from the cool water of the river and took advantage of clumps of green grass she snatch up with hr trunk as we sauntered along. Here was nature at its finest. Here was the world we live in.