Our Barahi Jungle Lodge is within the Chitwan National Park. Before arriving in this country we had a misconception that Nepal was generally very mountainous and thus likely to have cool temperate and alpine climate zones. This description adequately fits the more northern latitudes of Nepal at higher altitudes.
However, around Chitwan in southern Nepal at latitude 27 degrees north and an altitude of only 130 m above sea level, we are in the tropics with hot and humid conditions and jungle vegetation aplenty!
The Chitwan National Park lies in the Inner Terai lowlands and incorporates the flood plains of the Narayani, Rapti and Reu rivers. It was enlisted as a UNESCO World Heritage Natural Site in 1984 and guards were appointed to protect the area from poachers particularly those seeking the highly valued rhinoceros horn.
The park covers an area of 932 square kilometres and is home to a vast range of plants and animals. It has become a tourist mecca for enthusiastic naturalists seeking to see the many mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects such as butterflies. We have already sighted a one-horned rhinoceros and a marsh mugger crocodile but the pièce de résistance for us would be to see a Royal Bengal tiger. A land safari for our group will take place later this afternoon.
For the morning’s activity we visited a small nearby village that is home for the Tharu ethnic group, some members of whom we’d watched give a traditional dance display last night. Our guide for this visit was Rajib who’d also been our guide on the river trip yesterday.
The Tharu community originally lived within the now National Park area but were forced to relocate when the park was developed.
Tharu community village, Chitwan
Their homes are typically bamboo corner and roof poles with walls made from packed elephant grass covered with a mud/clay outer coating. Floors are hard earth or concrete with doors and windows kept small to decrease access areas for mosquitoes and other insect pests. Interestingly, it was was suggested that the Tharu people have generally developed a resistance to malaria.
Village house
Lady & child outside village kitchen
Inside village house kitchen
The Tharu women we met were quite shy but the children were keen to have their photos taken and to speak some English to us. The children were about to head to their nearby primary school which was due to start classes at 10:00.
Each of the small home blocks typically has a small separate kitchen with a wood fire plus an outside wash area with running water and a separate toilet. Most homes had small vegetable gardens and poultry were running around everywhere.
Although it might seem that these people live in a different world from us, the twenty first century is certainly evident here with several Tharu people we saw having mobile phones and some homes with satellite dish TV receivers on their roofs!
The visit to the village was informative and it was interesting to interact with some of the Tharu people.
We returned to the Lodge at around 10:00 and the temperature was now in the mid 30s with high humidity. We then had free time until our safari later in the afternoon and by then it will probably be a cooler time of the day.
View from our room, Barahi Jungle Lodge
Villas, Barahi Jungle Lodge
Pool area at Barahi Jungle Lodge
Table where we had dinner by Rapti River last night
Drongo (Dicrurus) sp. Barahi Jungle Lodge
Little Bee-eater (Merops pusillus), Barahi Jungle Lodge
The afternoon safari commenced at 14:30 with a 60 m boat trip across the river to where our jeep was parked waiting for us on the opposite river bank.
The jeep accommodates six guests in upper level seating and our guide Rajib and the driver had the two low level seats.
Our group in the safari jeep, Chitwan National Park
The road we followed was a one lane jungle track and was quite uneven and rocky in places.
For the first hour we saw little in the way of wildlife apart from storks and other aquatic bird-life wading in the Rapti River. We managed to get some photos of birdlife including summer bee-eaters and stone chats but most other birds were too flighty to obtain worthwhile shots.
Siberian stonechat or Asian stonechat (Saxicola maurus)
Chestnut-headed bee-eater (Merops leschenaultii), Chitwan National Park
We then were able to gain some fleeting glimpses of some spotted deer but Rajib advised us that there’d be many more to see later.
The jungle forest was dense with thick undergrowth and many magnificent trees, especially cotton trees which were dropping balls of fine cotton all around us.
We came out of a forest area into an elephant grass plain where, low and behold we came across two elephants both being attended by their handlers. These elephants are used as work animals performing tasks like moving logs and other loads utilising their amazing strength.
One elephant was having a break standing in the shallow river and drinking lots of water as well as spraying water onto its back to cool off a little in the oppressive heat.
Elephant, Chitwan National Park
We then encountered four or five spotted deer that seemed unaffected by our vehicle’s presence.
We stopped the jeep at a high point overlooking the Rapti river and looked for activity below. From a great distance we observed a rhinoceros that disappeared from sight and later reappeared chasing a second rhinoceros. Was this situation one involving male rhinos contesting territory or was it male female courtship going on? We had fruit drinks and returned to our jeep.
We then came across a herd of spotted deer involving hundreds of deer ranging in size from tiny fawns to adult males with impressive antlers.
Spotted deer, Chitwan National Park
Although we were desperately looking out for tigers we had to face the harsh reality that there are tigers here in this forest but they won’t be active until well after dark. There magnificent cats are nocturnal hunters.
At one river crossing we were able to see, quite distinctly the paw prints of a tiger within the wet sand on the water’s edge. Rajib suggested that the size of the footprints indicated that it was not yet fully grown.
The remainder of our safari afternoon was spent photographing rhinoceroses and in a period of about two hours we saw six, some of which grazed quite close to the road track. The rhinos were eating the tall elephant grass and this made good unobstructed photos difficult to obtain.
Greater one-horned rhinoceros, Chitwan National Park
Our final encounter with the one horned rhinoceroses gave us the best opportunities for clear photos as we came across two female rhinos grazing only a matter of a few metres from the jeep in quite open grassland.
Greater one-horned rhinoceros, Chitwan National Park
We were back at the Lodge by sunset with no tiger sightings but, nonetheless we’d had an enjoyable albeit bumpy afternoon’s entertainment.
We had evening drinks by the pool and then a buffet dinner before heading to our unit.
Tomorrow we leave Chitwan at 10:00 and take the six hour’s long road journey back to Kathmandu for our final full day in Nepal.