I woke up in a pool of sweat in the poky little guesthouse room. The power had cut out and within minutes the dank, sweltering air had stagnated as the ceiling fan slowed to a halt. I was getting used to it now, and in any case it was marginally more pleasant than being in a tent. Outside the rain was coming down in torrents and I knew it was going to be another tough day. I went downstairs to sit and drink chai as the tin roof clattered under the pounding water.
After we’d crossed the Ganges and walked east across the plains, the monsoon had finally arrived. Slowly but surely, the sporadic drizzle turned into daily downpours, initially just for an hour a day and then, as we got closer to the Nepal border, sometimes for five or six hours non-stop. Now it came without warning; the sky would blacken in a matter of minutes and people would run for shelter as the heavens opened. The roads turned into quagmires of mud and the paddy fields into filthy brown ponds.
A stream had formed from the bottom of the plastic guttering and the runoff filled the walkway to the main road. Bullfrogs croaked in delight.
‘It is almost a month late,’ Binod said. ‘We need it for the fields, my wife will be happy now. Without the monsoon everything will die.’ He was a lot more philosophical about it than I was.
I could also tell he was happy to be back in his homeland. He’d been excited to return to Nepal, and now it was only a matter of a few weeks before we reached Pokhara where he could be reunited with his family. I was happy for him, but at the same time I couldn’t help but think of my own family. I’d called my brother immediately after the Aghori’s ominous forecast and was relieved when he answered the phone, alive and well–albeit somewhat bewildered at my concern. But even hearing his voice hadn’t completely alleviated my worries and the words of the Aghori continued to trouble me.
With the rains came a new challenge. It would mean days on end drenched through, roads in turmoil and the added dangers of flooding and landslides. I looked out from under the tin roof at a poor dog, completely sopping wet, shivering pathetically in his brown shaggy coat. Apart from a couple of brave cyclists wrapped head to toe in plastic ponchos, the roads in Nepal were completely empty.
‘Is it because of the rain?’ I asked Binod, surprised that it was so quiet.
‘Not just the rain. I think there is also a strike. We call it a bandh. It means everything is closed.’
‘What are they striking about?’
‘I don’t know. People here are always striking. Striking and rioting, rioting and striking, it’s the way of life in Nepal. You remember?’
I did remember. I thought back to 2001 when I first met Binod in Pokhara, it was the reason I was here now: the Maoist riots and the Royal massacre that had caused me to head for the hills where Binod had looked after me all those years ago, as a result of which I’d made the promise to return and repay my debts. It seemed little had changed.
We left the shelter of the guesthouse and went outside to brave the rains. Within minutes we were soaked through. Binod found a plastic poncho which kept his upper half dry, and I wore a waterproof jacket which did the same, but neither of us had waterproof boots and soon enough we were grimacing at the sensation of squelching toes and wet socks.
With the driving horizontal rain it became hard to appreciate the beauty around us. Vibrant green paddy fields stacked row upon row were tended by young girls in kurtas for whom the rain was a blessing; their dresses clung sensually to wet bodies. Mothers sat plaiting their daughters’ hair on charpoys under canopies, watching with amusement as we stumbled on under the weight of wet rucksacks.
The thatched huts and piles of hay gave the villages the appearance of Saxon England. Little boys played games outside their homes, expertly shooting marbles into rain-filled gulleys and crevices. Buffaloes, coaxed by spindly farmers, lolloped along the road, their leathery hides sparkling in the rain. Women fished in wooden-framed nets in little pools and men cycled along the bumpy roads clutching umbrellas. Soggy dogs sifted for leftovers and oxen looked on, chewing the cud stoically. As we crossed a bridge over a river, children scampered about, naked in the water below us; it was a primeval scene.
Our first sighting of the Nepali Himalayas came into view. They loomed in the distance, the snowy peaks glinting on the occasional breaks in the weather. The lofty reaches of the Annapurna range were just north of here and at this time of year it was not just rainfall that added to the fast-flowing rivers but also mountain meltwater. As the sun burnt through the clouds, whole chunks of ice and snow could thaw in a day, sending torrents of water down into the valleys. Water came crashing down the mountain any way it could, carving out the fastest route to the sea, and annihilating anything in its wake. We rounded a corner to find that last night’s onslaught of rain had set the whole hillside free. Loosened by the water, vast boulders had made a bid for freedom into the valley below. Roads here could become blocked in an instant with metre upon metre of unstable debris piled in the way of these mountain routes. A snaking queue of buses and trucks waited for the locals to clear the rockfall–a painstakingly slow process that was being done with shovels. We watched as foolhardy car and minibus drivers mounted the landslide, wobbling next to the precipice and skidding over the mud and silt. Not for the first time on this trip, I was glad to be on foot.
We continued down into the valley where the first signs warning pedestrians of tigers and elephants lined the road. I wanted to get to Bardia National Park, the thick and uninhabited jungle to the east, before nightfall. We slept in a small guesthouse on the outskirts of Bardia that night.
At dawn the following morning, two men waited for us at the entrance to the national park. Both of them were short, stocky figures, Tharu people–descendants of the Indian invaders that took over the Terai plains hundreds of years ago. Binod had told me that we needed local guides to get us through the protected area and that we’d have to seek official permission. These were to be our guides for however long it would take to get through the jungle.
‘Good morning, sir,’ said a man with shoulder-length black hair and the face of a pirate. He wore an olive-green military shirt and looked like a rebel soldier.
‘My name is Umanga, and this is Chandra Oli, our ranger.’
He motioned to the man stood next to him; a skinny lad with a contorted face in an oversized rain mac. He grinned but said nothing.
The road came to a muddy end at the ranger station, and beyond it was a steamy wall of green forest. The seemingly impenetrable mass of bamboo and vines appeared alive with movement. Flickers of motion indicated curious langur monkeys and macaques watching us from their camouflage. There was a flash of brown and I noticed a pair of eyes staring from underneath antlers not more than a hundred metres distant: ‘forest deer’, said Binod as he pointed. The deer turned and vanished into the undergrowth.
‘There are many dangerous beasts in this jungle,’ Umanga told us, with an excited glint in his eye. ‘If we see a tiger, best thing is, don’t turn your back. If you turn your back, tiger will attack. They always come at you from behind.’
Binod nodded solemnly. ‘It’s true. We used to have them in Pokhara and many women were eaten in the fields.’
Umanga continued with his sombre brief. ‘If a rhino is charging, you must climb a tree, but if we see a bear, no climbing the tree. The bears can climb very easily. In this case, you must stand your ground. The leopards are afraid of the humans, so they won’t come close. No worrying about the leopards.’ He pronounced leopard to rhyme with leotard, and had reeled off the whole thing with a nonchalant smile on his face.
‘For the leeches, we can do nothing. Just take them off fast fast.’ He added. I’d forgotten about leeches.
Chandra Oli just stood there grinning with a big stick he’d picked up. He looked more like a boy scout than a park ranger.
‘Don’t we need a gun if we are going into tiger territory, just to be safe?’ I asked him, noticing that he looked woefully under-prepared for our fifty mile expedition through some of the most dangerous rainforest in the world.
‘No, no, sir. All we are needing is a stick.’ He grinned but I couldn’t have been less reassured. The safety briefing was over before it had even begun and Umanga hadn’t even mentioned half of the creatures that I had concerns about. But with that Oli raised his staff, motioned for us to follow on, and we trotted off into the jungle.
We followed narrow paths between grasses that rose up either side of us, some twenty feet high. The going underfoot was thick with mud and the air was humid and sticky. Often it was so dense we couldn’t even see the sky and it felt like we were walking through a tunnel of foliage. After a while though, the grasses cleared and we came to the swampy banks of the Babai river. A herd of chital deer, with their distinctive spotted coats and twisted antlers, were drinking from the fast-flowing waters.
Umanga looked out at the wide flood plain and shook his head.
‘This one is too fast to cross on foot. The rains have made these waters very high. We will take boat instead.’
I looked around, but there was no sign of any boat. A crane lurked at the water’s edge and I wondered how many crocodiles were skulking nearby, camouflaged by the murky water. I was grateful for the promise of a boat to get us across to the far side. That was until I saw what Umanga was referring to. He pulled aside some grass and tugged on a rope. Out of the reeds emerged a long, thin dugout canoe; nothing more than a hollowed-out tree trunk. He dragged it as close to the riverbank as it could get and motioned for us to hop in too. Binod laughed nervously. He’d never been in one before and suddenly I had recollections of the hundreds of river crossings I’d had to do on the Nile, watched by crocodiles all the while.
Sunk low in the water and rocking precariously, we made our way across the river. Binod clung on to the sides of the boat as Oli punted us across with a long bamboo pole.
‘There’s dolphins in there,’ mused Umanga.
‘Dolphins?’ I said, not sure if he was joking.
‘Yes, Gangetic dolphins. They are very blind, very rare creatures.’
‘What’s a dolphin?’ asked Binod.
Umanga laughed. I realised then the stark difference between the people of the plains and those of the mountains. Nepal is almost like two very different countries, and as I was to discover later this was the source of a lot of friction.
We clambered out of the boat and pushed deeper into the forest. Here the canopy was thick, and no breeze permeated the lower layers. At every turn, Umanga identified the shrill call of one of a hundred different birds and pointed out different species of trees. They towered up beside us, their closeness oppressive and threatening. The shriek of a peacock pierced the air and I could hear the far-off call of a parakeet. Streaks of sunlight broke through the branches high above us; a few narrow shafts of light making it down to the forest floor. I had to concentrate not to trip over the criss-crossed patchwork of gnarled roots that hid king cobras and green pit vipers. Every rustle unnerved me; there were rock pythons in this tropical forest so big they were known for swallowing deer whole.
Oli, who was quiet and spoke little English, had been walking along with his eyes on the ground. I wondered how he was going to spot these elusive tigers if he wasn’t looking out for them. Suddenly he stopped, forcing us all to come to a halt behind him.
Without a word he pointed at something on the ground. In front of us was the unmistakable paw print of a tiger, marked in the mud. He put a finger to his lips as if to tell us to be silent, but I didn’t need to be told. The paw print looked fresh–there was a tiger nearby.
Oli shimmied up into a tree with the ease and agility of a monkey and beckoned to us to follow him.
‘We looking tigers. Very near. Fresh tracks,’ he whispered.
I borrowed Umanga’s binoculars and scanned the green horizon. Despite their relaxed attitude to the big cats of the jungle, I was grateful that our guides clearly knew their stuff. It was all very well being able to track a tiger, though I did wonder how good they might be at getting away from one.
‘Look,’ I heard Oli whisper.
I glanced up, excited at the prospect of seeing one of the notorious beasts prowling through the undergrowth. I struggled to focus my eyes on what he was pointing at.
‘Elephant,’ he said.
On the banks of the river opposite, was a solitary wild elephant, a grey blur against the trees beyond.
‘Let’s get a better view,’ Umanga suggested. With that he bounded down out of the tree and continued off on the path ahead of us.
We came upon a lookout tower half a mile away. It had been built years before by the rangers as a way of tracking the wildlife and conducting surveys and of course for spotting poachers. As we climbed the rickety steps, we were able to see over the grasses and the treetops, and the thick canopy of a myriad of shades of green extended out for miles before us. The curve of the hills was gentle and I thought just how different it was to the steep escarpments where I had spent the last three months. Here in the jungle we had to have our eyes peeled and be constantly alert–the dangers ranging from the sting of a scorpion to being eaten alive by fire ants. Not to mention the prospect of getting squashed by an angry rhino. Up here above the forest, it was a relief to have some respite from the perils of the jungle below.
‘Somewhere down there is our tiger,’ said Umanga, taking the binoculars out of my hands. ‘Actually, there are fifty tigers inside Bardia. We counted last year.
‘My father’s father used to lead hunting expeditions–tiger hunting was big business. The Indian princes would come and they would ride on their elephants into the deepest parts of the jungle. They took their rifles and from the top of the howdah they could shoot at the tigers.
‘But now we care for the tigers instead,’ he added. ‘This is a conservation area. Now there are not so many. At that time they were breeding well and had to spread out to look for new territory and new prey, so they roamed higher into the hills.’
‘But now there are poachers, instead of the royals, that we are worrying about. Tigers are very valuable and many people are wanting to buy their heads, or their furs, especially the Chinese. The poachers are very dangerous. They are carrying guns and hiding in the forests and many villagers have been killed by them in the past.’
Oli had remained silent the whole time Umanga had been talking, his eyes glued to the horizon. I asked him what he was looking at and he pointed out a herd of twenty-two wild elephants that had emerged from the grasses and were now frolicking in the water. The babies played between their mothers’ legs, rolling in the shallows and squirting each other. I saw a shimmer of turquoise, as a kingfisher fluttered from its resting place on an elephant’s back.
They lolloped about, their long trunks curled up into the sky, unwittingly crushing the high grasses in their wake.
Umanga saw us watching. ‘There are elephants everywhere in Terai, but they are tamed, and have a mahout who looks after them, and drives them. But here in Bardia we have wild elephants. But they are very dangerous for man. If they get angry, they are running at fifteen miles per hour and crushing everything they see.’
With a feeling of both electrifying excitement and nervous trepidation we descended the lookout tower and set off deeper into the jungle. For days we walked through the forest, sometimes camping, sometimes staying in remote army outposts with the anti-poaching unit that Chandra Oli worked with. Sometimes we’d see nothing for hours on end except the dark green shadows. We tried to stick to the rangers’ trails but when it rained they would often disappear into nothing and we found ourselves hacking through the bush with our machetes. We’d try and follow the ridges for the sake of navigation or just walk on a bearing of due east. The problem of course came when we found ourselves at the tops of sheer cliffs with no way down, or faced with raging rivers that were impossible to cross. Then we’d have to backtrack and add miles onto an already exhausting journey. As I’d found on most of my expeditions, guides are usually the first people to get lost. Umunga and Oli were no exception. Neither of them had a GPS or a compass and they relied solely on their instincts and knowledge, but we’d been walking well away from their usual tracking routes and were breaking new ground. More often than not I found myself at the front having to lead the way and ‘guide the guides’. I was fine with that as I was used to it from my journeys in Africa but I could tell Binod was becoming more and more frustrated with the two plainsmen. On top of that he was much more at home in the cool mountain air than in the humid jungles of the Terai and I’d noticed he had become increasingly slow and quiet, often trailing at the back and not getting stuck into the usual duties of collecting water or cutting a trail.
On the afternoon of the fifth day we came across a tributary of the Babai. It was a wide but shallow river and the water appeared quite slow.
‘We can walk across, I think,’ said Umanga. ‘Let me check.’
Umanga stepped into the brown depths and immediately plunged to his waist. Still he regained his balance and waded on, out into the middle of the river which was about fifty metres across. He waved at us to follow and so we did.
I stepped down into the river. We’d given up taking our boots off to cross streams on the first day after we realised they were going to get wet regardless but it didn’t make the sensation any more pleasant. The cold water gushed down into our boots and swirled in little eddies around us. We started to wade across and aimed for the dark figure of Umanga. We pushed through the water, a silent train of sullen walkers.
I scanned the banks for the gharials–the common narrow-mouthed crocodiles that looked like miniature dinosaurs but are generally pretty harmless, and the far bigger and more dangerous muggers that make their home on the banks of this jungle river. Umanga had been regaling us with stories of one that was three metres long and had snapped up a patrolling soldier. I squinted to focus through the distant vegetation but failed to make out anything apart from a blur of green. We kept trudging, pushing our way through the river using our hands as paddles, as the brown murky water lapped against our stomachs.
Suddenly Umanga put his hand in the air and without stopping, pointed to the banks of the river opposite us. Only a hundred feet away, there at the water’s edge, I could make out an enormous crocodile. It was a mugger. We all froze. Its mouth was open as it basked in the sun. Then it suddenly lurched straight into the water, launching its bulky frame into the river. Somewhere beneath the surface the monster was scouring the riverbed and hunting for prey.
If we splashed or caused a commotion it was far more likely to notice us. Umanga and Oli clearly knew this, and we ploughed on without a word, my heart hammering in my chest. With every step I half expected the jaws of a giant reptile to wrap themselves around my leg.
We scrambled up the banks on the far side and once we were at a safe distance, stopped to catch our breath and I heaved a huge sigh of relief.
‘I don’t want to go on any more,’ Binod said to me as he plonked himself down on a fallen tree and removed his pack. ‘My feet hurt.’ Clouds had begun to form, and the bright morning was threatening to morph into yet another miserable afternoon.
Umanga and Oli looked away, clearly uncomfortable with the apparent dissent. The first drops of rain began to patter down onto our faces.
‘We should wait until the rain stops, then keep walking. I am covered in leeches and tired. My legs are smaller than yours.’ He pulled up his trouser leg to reveal a dozen fat, slimy beasts feasting on his blood. I helped him pull them off.
‘Sorry, mate, we need to press on.’ I explained to him where we needed to reach that evening in order to make it through the park within the week. We only had permits to travel and camp for a few days, and there wasn’t much room for negotiation when it came to the authorities. On top of that we had to make camp somewhere safe before it got dark.
‘We can’t let a little rain stop us from crossing the jungle,’ I insisted. ‘Get your pack back on and let’s move.’
I was trying to make light of the situation and encourage Binod, but I could tell he wasn’t getting on well with Umanga and was tired and hot.
My own boots were filled with puddles of river water and I too had leeches gorging on my legs. I wanted to rest and I’m sure so did the others but I also knew that the main priority was finding a decent camp before dark. The jungle is no place to be walking around at night.
As we marched on, Binod sulked and I wondered if he was up to the job of walking with me. Perhaps it was just the heat and oppressiveness of the forest but he seemed to be less enthusiastic than I remembered. When we were younger he had been so sprightly and laughed at my snail pace as we climbed the steep paths together. He was always at the front leading the way as a guide should be, but now, as we pressed on, he seemed to be losing interest. I could only hope that when we got out of the Terai and back into the mountains he’d perk up a little.
We made camp by a river that night in a valley leading down to the main channel of the Babai. The sides were steep and thick with undergrowth and the only flat ground we could find was on a raised island in the middle of a riverbed. There was a steady trickle of water flowing down from the hills but it was barely ankle deep, and the island was sufficiently high, just in case the water did rise in the night.
Binod pitched his tent in sullen silence and we all went to sleep early, exhausted and damp. We’d been lucky to get the tents up while it was dry because the moment we got inside it began to pour down. For the past few weeks we had been stopping at roadside guesthouses, by no means luxurious, but certainly bearable. We’d had mattresses, some running water and a solid roof over our heads to defend against the deluge. Now that we were off road again, it was back to the tent, sleeping bag and mattress for me. It felt good to be back in the wilds again initially but after a while the novelty wore off. The pouring rain had left us in a constant state of dampness, and my boots refused to dry out overnight. I was hungry for anything that wasn’t dhal bat, the Nepali staple of rice and lentils, and I would have killed for a bite of steak. Dengue-ridden mosquitoes buzzed around, annoyingly close to my ears, as I drifted in and out of sleep. Outside the tent a scorpion scuttled around my boots and an army of ants marched for the comforting shelter of my flysheet. I listened to the water tumbling down the river outside and shifted about, struggling to find a comfy position.
Suddenly I heard a scream. As I wriggled out of my sleeping bag I realised that it was Binod’s voice and I heard loud swearing in Nepali.
‘Lev, Lev, fast, fast,’ he yelled out into the blackness of the night.
As I got out of my tent and shone my torch into the pitch black, I realised why. The river had risen by two metres in a matter of just a few hours. The cliff, on which he’d pitched his tent, closest to the water’s edge, was crumbling into the abyss, eroded at a ferocious pace by the oncoming flood. The little patch had been metres away from the edge the night before, but now Binod was standing on a perilous overhang and the water was just inches from the ledge. If we didn’t act fast we’d be washed away into oblivion. Binod had already torn his tent down and was desperately trying to move everything away from the water as quickly as he could.
‘Shit, I’m coming.’ I ran to help him drag all of his kit out of the way of the encroaching water and we hurried to pack the rest of our gear up.
Umanga and Oli had woken up in the pandemonium and I’d never seen them move so fast. We gathered all of our kit within the space of just a few minutes and rushed through the thick undergrowth. I could only hope the far side of the island wasn’t flooded as well, and luckily the main flow of the water hadn’t breached this side. We frantically scrambled over the boulders, slipping and sliding and getting cut to shreds by the thorns and razor-sharp elephant grass. We made it to the side of the valley where we could climb a hill for safety. Binod was visibly shaking and even Oli was looking nervous.
Umanga, ever vigilant, scanned the blackness with his torch. Somewhere down below, visible only in concentrated patches of reflected light, our little island was slowly but surely being destroyed. The rocky fringes and muddy banks were inexorably being sucked into the river; into its powerful swell, which swept everything off downstream. We climbed and climbed, exhausted but spurred on by the alternative prospect of a watery grave. Finally we reached an outcrop high enough to be safe from the clutches of the river and collapsed in a heap.
‘Look, quick,’ whispered Umanga.
I turned around to where he was pointing the torch, and there, shining like glinting amber was a pair of eyes looking straight at us, not more than a hundred feet away. We froze, staring right back. In the night it was impossible to tell the size or what animal it was.
‘What is it?’ I whispered back.
I could feel Umanga’s breath warm on my cheek as he spoke softly. He paused for effect and I knew he was smiling.
He said just one word.
‘Tiger.’
I looked back at the torch beam and the eyes were gone. Nothing remained but the black and green of the jungle.
I looked at my watch–it was four a.m. Perching on the rock in stony silence the adrenalin wore off and it started to get cold as the sweat dried and my pulse slowed. We sat miserably waiting for the dawn in the stillness of the night as raindrops dripped down the backs of our necks.