Bardia Park

Bardia Is a little used national park in West Nepal. We are staying at the Forest Hideaway a beautiful guesthouse type resort on the Eastern border of the park. It has a beautiful garden and friendly staff. It is a great place to convalesce.  More on that later.
We chose a walking tour with our guide, Padam. He is an expert birder but of course the big tips are in showing people tigers. We did a lot of walking that day and tallied about sixty species of birds. At our stop for lunch overlooking a potential tiger crossing area, we were lucky to spot a one horned rhino. Then Padam's phone rang and we were off on a forced march to where one of his fellow guides had spotted a tiger. You guessed it. The tiger was long gone when we arrived. This is a familiar scenario that we had experienced on our last tigerless visit to Bardia. Off we went to another tiger viewing spot. Along the the way we got some great views of the great slatey woodpecker, the largest in the world. Padam figured we should revisit the spot where the tiger had been seen. It was late in the day just as the sun was going down.
To put this all in perspective, over the last three trips to Nepal and India we have spent a lot of time looking for tigers always arriving a few minutes late. I was reconciled to never seeing one.

We stole this from the web but that is just what it looked like

As soon as we stepped out of the bush Padam urgently whispered " tiger tiger ". And there they were a male and female lying on a beach in all their wild splendour.  Over the next five minutes we watched the male take a leisurely walk across the river and then walk down the beach towards us finally disappearing into the elephant grass. Even Padam who has seen a lot of tigers was impressed.

Man cold from hell

We spent another day in the park and spotted another four rhinos and three wild asiatic elephants but no more tigers.