Wildlife encounters

There are a few methods of wildlife viewing, most commonly on the back of an elephant, but if you get the chance, take a canoe trip on the main river or do walking trips rather than using jeeps.

Quick Tips:

There are many camps in the Chitwan area - make sure yours has all the facilities itself; otherwise they subcontract the activities and some of your time could easily be wasted as you wait about.

Also check out what their normal operations involve and what's included in the price. At Gaida all food is included, but this wasn't the case at other camps nearer the towns.

Best Way To Get Around:

Apart from wildlife viewing, you will have to arrange your own transport, you can get buses down to the area by asking about in Mugling - on the main Kathmandu-Pokhara road but also confirm with your camp that they will meet you, as few buses really go anywhere near the camps.

Note the camp itself has no phone service - all bookings and arrangements are made in Kathmandu, email gaida@mos.com.np

The Gaida camp is one of the few wildlife camps to be thriving whilst others in the area are struggling to survive with the lack of tourists in the country. This is hardly a surprise as the quality of the staff and its facilities are excellent. The camp is popular with both tourist groups and smaller bands of independent travellers, but is relatively inaccessible so confirm transport arrangements before booking. (I took a group there so we had the use of our own bus!) The Gaida staff will bring their jeeps up to the roadside to meet transport arriving, but if you have your own 4WD or vehicle which has a fairly high clearance then you can make it into the camp yourself where their parking area is secure. Otherwise contact the park direct for advice on travel, or they can arrange it for you.

The journey into the camp is exciting enough anyway, riding on open topped jeeps after having been stuck in a bus for a few hours makes you get that real off-the-beaten-track feeling.

On arrival at the camp you are met with the usual tea n coffee and a quick introductory talk. Accommodation itself is in chalet style accommodation, which is fairly basic but well suited to the environment you are in. They are all twin rooms; lighting is by candle but a paraffin lantern is delivered to every room each night, but best bring a torch anyway. All rooms have hot water & showers and a heater if you are here in the chilly seasons. None of the rooms are locked so if you are security conscious then use their safety deposit or bring a padlock for your room door. A laundry service is available and fairly reasonably priced.

Few people spend much time in the rooms though as each has a balcony for relaxing on or people head up into the main area of the camp where there is a bar built on stilts above the river's flood plain. One half is fully enclosed like a conservatory whilst the other has an open deck - a great place to watch out for animals at dusk or sunrise. And just next to the main dining hall where they served buffet meals every night (good ones at that).

The highlight of the camp for me though was the visit to the elephant stables. Here you get a close up encounter at ground level with the female elephants they use for the safaris (the male elephants are sent off to the government stables down the road), and whilst we were there we were lucky enough to meet a six week old elephant which was up to all sorts of antics under the watchful eye of its mother.

One of the reasons for choosing the Gaida Camp is that it has a tented camp deep in the wildlife reserve, easily the most southern location of any of the camp operators. Because of its location things are somewhat more basic than the main camp but the rewards are well worth a night's visit. The journey in itself is an adventure - where possible they will take you to the camp in jeeps, but often this option is impossible due to the height of the river, so you have to canoe the river for a few hours then walk in - walks of this kind are done in the centre of the day so reducing the risk of animal encounters as this is when they are least active. The walk in takes about an hour and a half.

When I said that facilities were basic - you are still not roughing it. The tents are large, safari style affairs, with two proper beds in each, and a shower room attached to each. Again the candle/paraffin lamp trick is used for lighting. The bar is in a rather small building (shack?) but the dining area is purposely built just like the main camp.

The camp is built on a small island with little creeks on all sides, again a deliberate choice to keep you clear of unwanted animal encounters, but it doesn’t guarantee anything - just a week before our arrival a bear was found sleeping in one of the tents. The creeks themselves are a fine place to go after dark as it’s the only place to get views of the stars and on our visit the forest on each bank was alive with fireflies and the noises of the jungle - truly magical.

Food again was included in the package, but as not many people use the tented camp it's worth checking what will be on the menu - the food gets transported from the main camp either by jeep or elephant every few days so there's a good chance of being able to influence the menu; there's always a vegetarian option but a talk with the staff can often produce impressive results.

The only activities available at the tented camp are walking safaris so make sure you have decent footwear as the paths can be muddy and long trousers are a distinct advantage - don’t wear bright vivid colours!

To return from the tented camp then for us this started with a walk out of the forest to meet up with ox drawn carts, driven (is that the right word?) by some local kids down to the river where instead of canoes we mounted elephants who waded through the river then took us through the jungle back to the main camp. Wicked!

All of the wildlife camp operator offer elephant safaris - they are easily the safest way of exploring the dense forest, and because you are on an animal that can normally be seen in the forest anyway they are less likely to scare off the other wildlife. Gaida has its own "fleet" of eight elephants so it’s a regular highlight of the camps daily activities. Every safari starts with a wade over the river where the elephants generally stop for a quick drink. Even though you are in a wooden box like saddle you can still feel the vibrations as they suck up the water - a bit weird really.

Once into the forest we spotted Rhinos on every trip, usually about two at a time but on one occasion we were fortunate enough to see six at once. All of the rhinos were wallowing in a pool but the light levels were too dark to take photos. The closest we got was only a few metres away when a rhino crossed our path.

Other animals we saw included monkeys high in the trees above (I'm sure they were throwing stuff down on us to keep us moving along), various deer (often hidden under dense bushes), and a snake - don’t know what type but a big one all the same. The elephant drivers are well accustomed to seeking out the most likely spots for finding wildlife, but they are employed for their riding skills. Few have much knowledge of English beyond the usual stock animal names.

Once the novelty of riding on elephants has waned a bit you should take on a canoe trip for a more relaxing break. There are no lifejackets but the water is never really deep. The canoes are large, dug out affairs capable of taking four or five people each. We had two of the camp's wildlife guides with us and paddled our way along, close to the banks of the river and spotted a great many birds but also a few crocodiles - specifically the Garial crocodile with its long snout. And thoughts over the rather shallow water came back rather quickly.

The canoe trips are generally one way affairs on the Narayani river as although shallow, the current's fairly fast flowing in places so they couldn’t hope to paddle the canoes upstream, laden with tourists for long. Going downstream they really only just have to steer, allowing the speed of the river to do the rest.

Perhaps a little risky in certain parts of the park, walking safaris are again part of the package and take various forms. We only did one early morning walk and it was a waste of time as the mist was in so far that we didn’t see anything but did manage to make ourselves easy targets for leeches which were waiting in the grasses - on the subject of leeches, don’t pull them off - if they’ve bitten you sprinkle them with salt and they'll fall off straight away - if you pull them off they’ll leave their teeth in you and the bleeding will last much longer.

The mist stayed with us every morning of our visit so no more walks were offered at that time. One of the best walks we did though was towards the end of the afternoon from the tented camp - a few of our group were interested in birdwatching and came away stunned from having seen over 50 species of bird in only three hours - that's the speciality of the tented camp because of its location so far away from human habitation. Although we never saw any tigers on our trip we did see plenty of tracks crossing the muddy trails near the tented camp - some of which the guide reckoned were only a few hours old - something which he chose to tell us once we'd returned to the camp.

The last form of walk undertaken involved next to no wildlife at all - the purpose being more cultural, being a visit to the local village where we were told about the style of agriculture, how agriculture and settlements are regulated in the wildlife park, how houses are built and so on - all a bit unexpected after the remoteness of the tented camp experience but quite interesting to see mud brick buildings with TV aerials bolted to their roofs! Although it’s a bit like voyeurism, don’t be too concerned as the villagers obtain substantial income from the wildlife camps in the form of employment and infrastructure development funded by visitor fees; they also are involved in dancing demonstrations and the like.

Chitwan National Park is probably the best known park in Nepal and is listed as a World Heritage Site - it's all in the ownership of the government and covers about 100,000 hectares on the border with India.

The main reason for Chitwan's status as a haven for wildlife is that it's one of the few places in Nepal that isn't mountainous - actually it's almost totally flat, with much of the area around the Gaida Camp being an extremely large flood plain (miles wide) - just before our visit the monsoon had caused the river levels to rise by over four metres - big rises are expected and housing is built with this in mind - either on stilts, on high ground, or from easily replaced materials such as mud brick. The main river is the Narayani which for our time there was a fairly shallow but wide river - the deepest point we became aware of was probably only two metres deep but this recent flooding had been more sustained and higher than usual so much of the ground had been covered with a layer of mud - this is good and bad.

The mud is brought from upstream and is very fertile so helps it the forest to regenerate, unfortunately by covering everything it reduces the food supply for the animals in the short term and had the effect of altering our plans for moving around the area as jeeps were having trouble negotiating the deep unstable mud which existed in some places.

We still had a great time and there were plenty of animals to be seen, the mud sometimes making it better as it was easier to identify the animal tracks. Still, it's probably best to leave a fair bit of time between the end of the Monsoon and coming into the park - one of the best times being at the start of November.

Things to bring - you should certainly be wary of your clothing, long sleeves and long trousers are an advantage when riding the elephants as otherwise you could get scratched a bit by tree branches as the elephants plough their way through the forest. Darker plain colours are also best in order to avoid scaring off animals or attracting unwanted attention - so avoid reds, yellows and whites, also in the same vein of thought you should avoid strong perfumes as this is nothing short of heaven for the mosquitoes.

Lastly a checklist of equipment should include, a torch to see around camp at night, cash - as it's often difficult to exchange cash when you need it most, a padlock for your valuables and decent footwear for walking safaris