Bardia and Tharu Communities

Bardia is what Chitwan was thirty years ago. It is bigger, far emptier of people, and it holds the best chance of seeing a wild tiger anywhere in Nepal. The price is the journey: it is in the far west, and getting there costs you the better part of a day in each direction.

For most first-time visitors, that trade is worth making only if wildlife is a real priority rather than a box to tick. If it is, this is the place.

The park

968 square kilometres of sal forest, grassland and river along the Karnali, protected since 1976 and a national park since 1988. The eastern boundary is the Babai valley; the western is the Geruwa, a branch of the Karnali, which is where much of the good watching happens.

Around 125 tigers are estimated to live here. The population has grown substantially since the 2000s, and Bardia is the reason Nepal’s national tiger numbers went up rather than down.

Also here: greater one-horned rhino, translocated from Chitwan and now breeding; wild elephant, including some very large tuskers; swamp deer, four other deer species, sloth bear, leopard, gaur; mugger and gharial crocodile; and Gangetic river dolphin in the Karnali, which is one of very few places in Nepal you can see them.

Seeing a tiger, realistically

March to May is the window. The rivers drop, the waterholes shrink, the grass has been cut and burned, and animals concentrate at water in the open. Sightings in that period are common enough that operators here talk about them without embarrassment.

Even so: nobody can promise you a tiger. Four days of early starts is the honest ask, and people who come for two often see nothing bigger than a deer and leave disappointed.

The methods, in rough order of what they are good for:

• Machan sitting: a raised hide overlooking a river bend or a pool, several hours, mostly silent. This produces the good sightings.
• Guided walking in the sal forest with two naturalists. Tracks, alarm calls, scat, and the occasional very direct encounter. The safety briefing is real and you should listen to it.
• Jeep drives cover the distances between grasslands.
• Rafting the Karnali for dolphin, gharial and birds along the bank.

Alarm calls are how tigers are found. A langur or a chital calling repeatedly in one direction means something is moving. Guides here read this well, and the hour after an alarm call is when to be still and quiet.

The Tharu

The communities around the park are Tharu, who lived in this malarial forest belt long before it was habitable for anyone else and carry a partial genetic resistance to malaria. Their villages ring the buffer zone: longhouses of mud and lattice, decorated walls, rice and fish.

There are community homestays here rather than only lodges, and staying in one is the difference between visiting a national park and visiting a place. Expect simple rooms, family food, and no menu.

The relationship between the villages and the park is not simple, crop damage from elephants and rhino is a genuine and continuing problem for people living on the boundary, and a good guide will tell you about it rather than around it.

Practical things

• The permit is per entry, not per stay. Four days of activities inside the park means four permits. Check what a quoted price includes.
• Nepalgunj is the flight; the road from there is two and a half to three hours. The overland bus from Kathmandu is fourteen hours and up.
• March to May is hot, mid-thirties and rising, which is exactly why the animals are visible. Start at dawn, sleep in the middle of the day.
• The monsoon closes much of it. June to September the rivers are high, grass is over head height, and walking is not possible.
• Bring binoculars. More than anywhere else on this list.
• Leeches on forest walks in the wetter months.