After
my New Year trip to Pokhara and Kathmandu it was not long to wait for my next
adventure, a trip to Bardia National Park. This inevitably involved another
long bus journey though – I generally quite enjoy the first six hours of the
bus journeys – it is the last few hours which are a killer!!!
I
visited Bardia with Janake and Abhi, from my home-stay family. We set off early
on the short 2 hour trip to Butwal before changing onto the bus to take us to
Bardia. It was a very different journey though from Butwal as we headed West
along the Southern and mostly flat part of Nepal, known as the Terai region. It
was getting dark by the time we reached Bardia and we then had a short ½ hour
journey to Sonja’s home-stay, though long enough to get a puncture! We soon arrived
at Sonja and her partner Bouddi’s new home-stay though (we were their first ever
guests!) and were warmly welcomed by them and Bouddi’s two excitable but
adorable children, Usha and Sandez. We had dinner that evening sat round a
campfire and I had my first taste of Rice Beer which I love!!!
The
next morning started very foggy as we had expected but to our surprise and
delight it turned into a beautiful blue sky day (the area at this time of year
is often plagued by a lingering, cold fog). Abhi and I borrowed two old
bicycles with the old fashioned handlebars and set off for a short exploration before we returned back and then
took Usha and Sandez to school on the back
of the bikes. The area is really beautiful and so different to other parts of
Nepal. There were lots of other people on bicycles taking their children to school
and it was a really lovely cycle through farmland and picturesque villages. The
houses almost look like they are a film set or set up for a picture
postcard – there are old tools scattered
around and corn drying in the sun and sometimes a few chickens, goats or a
buffalo munching on some grass; but it is all real and it’s just how it is.
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| Abhi and I take Usha and Sandez to school. |
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| Cycling is very popular in Bardia which, unlike Tansen, is very flat. |
When we got back we
visited another home-stay as Janake was interested to see some others, as a
member of the home-stay committee. The design of the houses is really amazing,
there is a wooden frame coated with a clay like mud which hardens to form the
walls. They decorate the walls with lots of carvings of rhino’s, elephants and
other animals and sometimes there are small pieces of mirror embedded into the
clay to form decorative patterns.
Our next trip and
the bit I was excited about was a walk into the community forest where wild
animals roam freely. We were given a stick each though told that this would be
fairly useless against a tiger, rhino or wild elephant. The stick can be used
to beat on the floor to scare animals off though I wouldn’t want to bet on
it!!!
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| Frightened expressions as we enter the jungle!! |
It was amazing to
be walking through the undergrowth knowing that there was a very real
possibility that there were wild animals around which realistically were far
more likely to see us than they were to see them, particularly in the case of
the tigers. Not long after we saw what looked to be fairly fresh footprints of
a tiger and also seemingly fresh droppings. That only heightened the excitement
though we carried on for a while longer without seeing anything. It wasn’t too
long though before we heard some shouting which apparently came from villagers
on the other side of the forest. At first this seemed to be a real annoyance
but luckily for us it was people who were there cutting the grass and were
actually trying to shoo off some rhino which were munching away there. This
pushed the rhino towards us and forced us to climb a tree. Rhino’s have
notoriously bad eye sight and we didn’t want them charging blindly towards us.
From our vantage point in the tree we had a close, if a little obscured, view
of three rhino’s approaching. We watched for a good 20 - 30 minutes as a mother
and her two offspring, one a small baby, another rather bigger, grazed in the
long grass all around us. They can’t have been more than 15 metres away and at
one point one of them looked up and stared intently as us before getting back
to its eating. We were sure to be absolutely silent throughout and had to
ignore the growing feeling of cramp that comes from being in an awkward
position halfway up a tree, unable to move! It was a truly awesome experience
to be so near to such big and powerful creatures knowing that if they went for
us we would be in real trouble!
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| For such a large animal the rhino is amazingly well camouflaged (top left). Monkey in the trees (top right) and a close up look at the rhino (bottom). |
Thankfully we didn’t
have any trouble and they skulked off into the undergrowth and we jumped down
from the tree and made off in the other direction. A short time later we were
back at the jeep and went off to the nearby village for some lunch. It really had been quite a surreal experience.
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| A delicious lunch after our jungle adventure. |
After some lunch Abhi
and I went for another short cycle ride to explore the village before we got
back in the jeep and drove through a track in the forest back to Sonja’s
village.
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| An elephant returning to the stables with it's dinner. |
We stopped off at
an elephant breeding sanctuary on the way back to get a close up look at some
of the elephants. Having seen the rhino’s in the wild it was a little sad to
see the elephants in captivity, though they are there because they have either
been ill-treated or orphaned from poaching, which only a few years ago was rife
and is still something the army guard against. The elephants are let out into
the park each day to graize and from all accounts are well treated.
With the sun
setting it was a really beautiful walk back through the village towards Sonja
and Bouddi’s house. Having been down by the river earlier I thought it would be
a good place to watch the sunset so Abhi and I grabbed the bikes and Usha and Sandez jumped on the back wanting to go too.
We cycled as fast as we could down to the riverbank trying to beat the setting
sun. We got there a moment too late but the sky was still a beautiful colour
and it was very peaceful so it was still worth the trip. We were looking out across
the river which marks the boundry of the national park hoping that some animals
might emerge from the other side to take an evening drink.
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| Beautiful Bardia. |
Suddenly
we thought we had had some unbelievable luck when Usha shouted out tiger and
pointed to the the tree line on the other bank. There, keeping quite still,
there was a big cat which seemed to be staring right at us! I grabbed my camera
and tried to take some photo’s but even on full zoom it was difficult to make
out if it was indeed a tiger. For a couple of minutes we wathced but after a
while it became cleared that having still not moved an inch, it was, in fact, a
very tiger shaped, tree trunk!!!
It
was a little dissapointing though also quite funny and I had about 8 different
pictures of this tree trunk which we had all let our imagination believe was a
tiger…maybe next time!!!
That
evening we again sat round a camp fire eating the delicious chicken that Bouddi
cooked on the open fire. We started to make some plans for the next day – I was
hoping to go into the national park, hopeful that I might see something more
exciting than a tree trunk! Unfortunately though our plans for the next day
were literally washed away by the torrential rain that persisted all morning
and for a couple of hours past lunchtime. We moved to another lodge which
Janaki wanted to visit but spent quite some time peering out at the rain and
playing some cards.
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| Top: Myself, Janaki and Abhi keeping warm around the fire. Bottom: Sonja (far left) and Bouddi (far right) prepare the feast. |
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| Rain changed our plans on our last day - we were very lucky though to get one good day at this time of year. |
Eventually
it did clear up enough to venture out and we visited another lodge, an eco
lodge. It was interesting to see and great to see that there are some people
here who have an understanding of the environment and the need to protect it.
Abhi,
Janaki and I went out also to visit the crocodile breeding centre which
although doing some positive work was a rather grim set of enclosures but there
was also lots of monkies roaming freely in the trees which I always enjoy seeing.
The final evening was again a nice evening, keeping warm around the campfire,
eating good food and getting better aquainted with the rice beer!
The
next morning it was a very early start before a long, 10 hour, bus journey back
to Tansen. Bardia was definitely worth visiting though. We counted orselves very
lucky having had one glorious day of sunshine when the area, at this time of
the year, is often enveloped in a cold fog that lingers about for much of the
day. I hope, though I’m not sure f time will permit it, to come back here and
continue looking out for those elusive tigers. The people, the villages and of
course the rhino’s, though made it a really memorable trip.
Will
write again soon!
Andy.
x
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