Heaven is Myth. Nepal is Real.

The road to heaven is not only narrow, but apparently just one dusty chowk after another. We were travelling west on the Mahendra Highway toward a place that had grown in my imagination over the last few months: Bardiya National Park. Alyssa and I had first talked about this trip during Pre-Service Training, and now it was finally happening. But first, the drive west. 

The urbanized Terai landscape, blanketed in heat and grime, stretched on endlessly, until, suddenly, signs started cropping up on the roadside...Watch out for tiger! Drive carefully. Save one, save them all! And my favorite: If elephants didn't exist, you couldn't invent them. I knew we were getting close. Sure enough, concrete houses soon gave way to sal forests, and before we even entered the park, we saw huge termite towers (looking strikingly similar to La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona), grey langur monkeys, chital (spotted deer), and mugger and gharial crocodiles. Some more driving brought us to Thakurdwara, a quaint Tharu town on the edge of Bardiya and the location of our homestay.  

The one interesting roadside attraction. Om Shiva.

Let me provide some background. Once a hunting reserve for members of the Rana Dynasty, Bardiya is now the largest national park in Nepal's southern Terai lowlands. Located 350 miles from Kathmandu, few tourists venture out this far, leaving Bardiya much less developed than Chitwan National Park to the east. (Chitwan is part of Nepal's tourism golden triangle alongside Pokhara and Kathmandu). 

In Bardiya, I saw only one hotel taller than two stories. Most tourist accommodations are simple homestays and eco-friendly lodges. This minimal disturbance makes Bardiya the premier destination to see the Terai's "Big Three": the Bengal tiger, the one-horned rhino, and the Indian elephant. Although March and April are the ideal months to visit (when temperatures above 100°F force animals out of the brush and to watering holes), you'll see that arriving before the start of the season didn't hinder our wildlife sightings any. 

On this trip, there were seven of us--written out here for posterity: me, Alyssa, Jackie, Tyrone, Shay, Mei, and Will. Tyrone, Alyssa, and I all received the same spiel from our host families when we informed them of this trip: tigers will kill you; don't you dare go into the jungle alone; don't stay near the jungle; there are bad men waiting in the jungle. For Nepalis, generally, the natural world is something to be feared and tamed. I guess it's the privilege of Westerners, living lives increasingly separated from the natural world, to find in it refuge, excitement, and pleasure (is this the legacy of Romanticism? I should have studied harder).  

Our homestay was a cute little place run by a Nepali-Dutch couple, and all our activities were coordinated through them. Although I'm loathe to plug any businesses on this blog (I must protect the sanctity of Here I Yam at all costs! This is a very special blog, as I'm sure you would all agree), they really do deserve a shoutout: Bardia National Park Nepal | Bardia Homestay Nepal. 

Our hosts and some of the gang

Our first activity was a jeep safari in the northwest of the park. We were separated into two groups. 4 of us in one jeep, 3 in the other. Early in the day, we heard that the other group had spotted a tiger from a watchtower. A tiger sighting on the first day? Where's the fun in that? 

For us in jeep #2, the hunt was still on. I felt that old, atavistic feeling coming on--the unyielding persistence that has driven man's dominion over all other creatures. I wanted to find this tiger, to kill it, to claim it as mine. Let's get an old goat and tie it up as bait. Let's get one of the patrol elephants to stamp the damn thing out of the grass. Let's use any underhanded method to bring this tiger to us. 

Really, this is only a half-truth. I did feel like a relentless hunter at moments, but at heart, I am a gatherer. After 10 hours in the park, I was ready to pack up, return to the longhouse, and get a fire going. I didn't see a tiger, but I saw a few jackals--animals with a temperament much closer to my own. 

Still, our guides were determined to deliver us something. News came from another guide of a leopard kill. The leopard had carried its deer up into the tree, dropped it, and then came down and got it again. We rushed over to the site; the guides entered into the brush, armed with only a bamboo stick for protection, and poked around. Nothing. I would have to wait til tomorrow for another chance at the hunt.

Chital, or spotted deer.
Photo credit: Mei. 

The next activity was a jungle walk. It was me, Shay, and Alyssa, along with two guides--one in front, one in back--armed only with bamboo sticks. We had barely entered the park when the lead guide, Balkrishna, stopped and pointed out tiger pugmarks in the sand and a nearby sleeping spot. I am a cynic through and through. I always think someone is trying to get one over on me. My first thought after seeing this "evidence" of tiger activity was, Yeah, right. Someone came out here early this morning and stamped the prints into the sand and flattened some grass.

We walked on until we reached a river. There, Balkrishna instructed us to sit and wait, as this was a well-known tiger crossing point. He showed us photos of birds on his phone when suddenly he stopped, stood up, dramatically waited for a beat, and said in his gravest voice: "I have heard the roar of a tiger." Shit, I thought, this guy is punking me. Until I heard it too! Not a roar, really, more of a lowing, but it sounded like it was only twenty feet away from us, hiding in the tall grass. 

We quickly relocated to a spot that would allow us to cover more of the river in case the tiger crossed. That day, we gave chase three times. First, to see the tiger (failure). Second, to see one-horned rhinos (success). And third, to see a Burmese python swimming in the river (success). Either Balkrishna would hear something or a call would come in from one of the other guides and off we went: fording rivers, bushwhacking through elephant grass, hurrying across the charred landscape (controlled burns are necessary to promote regrowth of the grass).

Machine makes a monster out of man. I was a lot less aggressive on my own two feet than when I was hiding inside a jeep. In fact, I fell asleep a few times on the walk. There was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. The hunter became the prey.   

On this walk, Balkrishna shared many stories with us, some apocryphal no doubt. He told us about the magical Tharu men of his childhood and their folk wisdom. E.g., If you can eat a green chili after being bitten by a snake and still feel its heat, then that snake wasn't venomous. He also told us about a tiger that lay on the riverbank for a prolonged period of time. A call went out to a wildlife photographer in Kathmandu, who flew to Nepalgunj (45 minutes), hired a taxi to Bardiya (2 hours), and then hiked 30 minutes into the park, and still made the shot. Nepal can be a very small place if you have the money. 

Through the grass. Tigers undoubtedly near.

A quick post-lunch nap.
Photo credit: Alyssa.

The hunt was still on and the pressure was building. Would I ever get to see a tiger? 

On day four of the trip, we went back into the park in our jeeps. The morning was full of false starts: guides would hear something--the scream of a deer (whoever named them barking deer got it wrong. These guys really need to be called screaming deer) or the cry of a monkey--and we would rush off to the spot. I'd peer through my binoculars and will something to move in the grass or along the dusty jeep tracks. 

Then a promising call came in. A guide had seen a tiger and it was moving toward the watchtower. We lined up with all the other tourists in their jeeps. Waiting, waiting. And then suddenly Balkrishna shouted "tiger!" and pointed behind us. I turned and there she was. A beautiful Bengal tiger sashaying fifty meters away (though I'm a terrible judge of distance, so it could have easily been 20 or 100 meters too). 

I'm a melancholic personality. All I heard after the sighting was "Is That All There Is?" by Peggy Lee (or Chaka Khan, for that matter) playing in my head like a soundtrack. Eight hours on the chase for a 10 second sighting. We got back into the jeep and hurried over to the community forest just outside the park, where other tigers, two males and one female, had been spotted in the last few days. 

As so often happens with these things, once you see one, more and more just keep coming. We raced to the forest and flung ourselves out of the jeep (Tyrone's video makes it look like we are performing a police raid) to find a tiger cooling himself off in the river. He sat there with just his head above the water, gazing straight at us. Thirty minutes later, we saw a female cross the river. She first tentatively dipped her paw in the river, like she was testing the temperature, then swam across, got out, rolled around in the grass, and disappeared into the trees. That night we celebrated with some locally brewed rice beer, customarily served in one-liter plastic water bottles. And, of course, my melancholy dissipated.  

Any minute now...

Hey there, Mr. Tiger!

The climax of the trip was our one-night stay in a treehouse, where we saw wild boars, wild elephants, and a tiger barely twenty feet away. I can hardly convey the excitement and terror of that night/morning, and so I won't even try. I'll keep it as a private memory. All good narratives abandon the reader right at the climax, right? Consider this my reinvention of the travelogue as an art form. 

5 full days in Bardiya and I captured only a fraction of our activities in this post. In addition to the jungle walk and safaris, we also rafted down the Karnali and Bheri Rivers. It felt so good to be on the water. We saw women sifting for gold along the riverbank, men checking fishing traps from their dugout canoes, and gorgeous silt- and sandstone formations. 

Our group also visited Badhaiya Tal (my new obsession is swamp hens. Think they can be domesticated?) and the Blackbuck Conservation Area. In total, we saw five tigers, two rhinos, and two elephants. A perfect amount, if you ask me. Any fewer, and it would feel like maybe you didn't see anything at all. Any more, and you start to lose track of each individual sighting. 

All I can say is that Bardiya was a perfectly successful trip. What more could you ask for? 

Rafting under the Chisapani Bridge.
Photo Credit: Alyssa

The rickety old treehouse.
Photo credit: Jackie

Blackbuck. Just a cutie.
Photo credit: Jackie

Here I Yam! keeping watch. No tiger gets past me.
Photo credit: Alyssa