Bardia National Park

And what an adventure it was... But let's start at the very beginning:
Once we were reunited in Kathmandu with 1 day delay (Alex happy, but around 5kg less) we had to do some urgent laundry and then organized ourselves to go to Bardia, an untouched national park in the far west of Nepal.

Moni has already been to Nepal 5 years ago and visited Chitwan National Park the last time which was great for seeing rhinos, but Chitwan is getting quite touristic these days and you have hords of elephants carrying hords of tourists into the jungle each day which kills a bit the experience.
We read, however, that Bardia National Park in Western Terai is today what Chitwan used to be about 30 years ago, so it was pretty clear for us that we wanted to go there. By now we also know why it is still so untouched: because it is a real pain to get there! Either you take a 14-16h bus ride from Kathmandu or you take a 1h flight for 185USD per person per direction and then yet another bus for 2-3 hours. As we have the time and we need to take care of our budget, we opted for the bus ride.
The owner of the lodge we booked in Bardia was super helpful and got us the bus tickets for the next day. We then hopped on the taxi and arrived at 4pm at the "new bus park" which was described in the guide book as "huge and confusing". This is a pretty good description given the fact that literally nothing was indicated in English and we were not able to decipher a single word! We found a very helpful man in uniform though who asked his way through to our bus.
It was a local "deluxe" bus (advertising on board wifi - dream on!) which was quite an experience as we were the only Westerners and nobody was really speaking English on the bus. The good thing about a local bus is that you cannot freeze to death at night (and everybody who has already taken a night bus in Asia will know what I mean...) because it simply does not have air condition. It had little fans installed in every row, though, which is super practical because this can happily spread all the dust that is coming in from the open windows :).

It took us already 3 hours to get out of Kathmandu because they were filling up the bus with passengers and cargo every 200 meters. And then the bus was driving and driving and driving... The funniest scene was when the driver's assistant came to the passenger cabin with his mobile phone and gave it to me, signalizing me "It's for you"! - ???? - Turned out the owner of the lodge who had organized our tickets called the driver to make sure we were on the bus, they drop us off at the right station and to ensure that we were doing fine. What a service!!
After a long night without sleep (Moni around 37min in total, Alex maybe 1h20), our butts were hurting, we did not find a comfortable position anymore, it was getting hotter and more humid and worst of all - we were still not there yet. What was supposed to be a 14-16h bus ride (and we were prepared for the worst) ended up being a 21,5h bus ride and we even had to change the bus next day at noon. The last 13km to the park were dirt road and the local bus (!) even had to cross a river before we were picked up by the lodge manager at around 2pm. You cannot imagine the good feeling of cold water on our sticky and dirty skins once arrived at the lodge - like heaven!!

In the afternoon we visited the village and the elephant breeding center where we saw an 18 day old elephant baby. Just wanted to pack it and take it with us :) (though not sure it would fit in the 23 kg bag policy :) ).
The next two days were full days of jungle walks with our guide. To start the hike we had to cross the knee-deep river with brownish water on foot to reach the national park. As it was just the beginning of the season we were the only ones in the lodge and the guide adapted well to our walking pace and our wishes. As Bardia NP is known as one of the best places in the world to spot a royal bengal tiger, we were of course keen on seeing one.
Unfortunately, we were not lucky during those two days even though we went very deep into the jungle to some spots we are sure not many tourists have been to yet. Our guide explained us that so shortly after the monsoon the grass is really lush and high, which makes it difficult to see tigers and as well there is water everywhere in the park so the animals are not really forced to come to the river. So if you ever want to go there and have better chances to see tigers go just before the monsoon season in April/May.
We still saw some monkeys, deer, a scorpion, lots of birds, 3 of the endangered one-horned Indian rhinos - one even mama with a baby rhino and on day 2 on the way back Alex spotted a wild elephant grazing peacefully.
Even though we were a bit disappointed that we did not see tigers (trust us our guide was equally bothered that he did not find one for us!), we can still recommend the national park. It is a beautiful, peaceful and, most important, authentic piece of nature. We even had a close-up encounter with a 4th rhino on day 2 where our guide made us immediately turn around and hide behind some trees in the forest. Luckily, the rhino did not go after us, but backed away into the jungle. Same when we met the wild elephant, our guide made us take a detour on the way back as we would have passed the elephant way to closely and literally nothing can stop a wild elephant. We really liked these encounters as it showed us how helpless we little humans actually are against nature. And we like the concept of respecting the other's habitat - live and let live.
Another species that unfortunately populates the park like crazy are the leeches. After 1h in the park we already had to take off the first worms (those bloody bastards!) from our clothes and skin. Day 2 was even worse and Alex had to take off 5 leeches in a row from his belly and I found some beasts on my upper inner thigh and below my butt (no clue how they managed to get there).
And last but not least some words about our accomodation: the Bardia Eco Lodge was - as the name indicates - an eco friendly lodge with compost toilets and solar power which was sometimes working, but most of the time not ;). The cook was a cute about 18 year old boy who prepared really nice local food (we could make wishes for what we want to eat) and was always super proud when we told him that we liked his dishes.
 

After 3 nights it was time for us to leave the park and continue our journey back up northeast to Pokhara, a relaxed little town on the shore of Phewa lake with spectacular views of the Annapurna range if it is not cloudy.
While we already thought the bus from Kathmandu was crappy, you should have seen our faces when we saw the rusty box on wheels that was transporting us to Pokhara :D.
At least the 14h journey "only" took us 16 hours (admittedly, the guy was driving like a maniac on those narrow mountain roads) and we arrived in Pokhara the next morning at 7am. It was another slow, sleepless and super dirty night, so we were both grumpy when we finally got off the bus and the local taxi drivers wanted - of course - to rip us off for the short taxi ride to the center. After a shower and 2h power nap the world already looked much better and we headed off to arrange our trekking permits to go on the 5-days Annapurna Panorma Trek the coming days. Infos and pictures will follow once we are back.

Don't forget to check out the wildlife pictures from Bardia National Park and we would be happy to get some news from Europe as well.
We'll stay in touch - take care!
Alex & Moni