Our representative will pick you up from the airport and transfer you to the Hotel in Kathmandu. In the afternoon you can explore the streets of Thamel, the tourist capital of Nepal. In the evening during the welcome dinner, you will be briefed about your program in Bardia and Chitwan.
Although most of your queries are answered during our correspondence, you can share any doubts or queries if you have any during the welcome dinner phase.
We start the day with a warm breakfast at Kathmandu and head towards Chitwan. We make stops for tea refreshment and at around 1 pm, we reach Chitwan where a freshly prepared lunch will be waiting for you.
After rest, your jungle guide/naturalist will brief you about the activities and take you for a walk around the Tharu Village. You can see the lifestyle and the things they do. Besides that, the guide will also explain to you how they are dependent upon forests and rivers for life and also their tattoo and Heena culture. You can see some of the Tharu men and women making baskets and fishnets from locally available resources.
After you return to the hotel, you will be served some drinks and the Tharu dance starts on the hotel premises. It is an hour-long program with different dances of the Tharu community. At last, the dancers will invite you to dance and you can move your body for a while before dinner for a good appetite!
Your day starts with a wake-up call which is mostly a knock at the door by the staff as most jungle lodges don’t have intercom services.
You will have breakfast before heading out for the canoe trip. The canoe is a long wooden boat made from either a silk cotton tree or Sal tree and seats as many as 15 people depending upon the length. The ride will be about 40 minutes and during the canoe ride, you can see two species of crocodile basking in the sun and many birds, and if you are lucky enough a rhino drinking water from the river.
The canoe ride ends near the Elephant breeding center where you can see more than 25 elephants as well as some small and yet big newborns. The Naturalist will brief you about the daily routine, behavior, and eating habits of the elephants.
After the briefing, we will go to the river to see the elephants bathing. You can take a shower on top of an elephant after paying 2-3 dollars. Soon after the shower, we will head back to the hotel and have lunch.
After lunch, we will participate in the elephant back safari which is usually 1.5 to 2 hours long. You are likely to encounter some wildlife animals like sambar deer, spotted deer, rhesus macaques, gray langurs, jungle cats, marbled cats, and Indian Rhino on this trip. Walk back through the forest to the hotel.
After breakfast, we drive to Bardia with sweet memories of Chitwan and its wildlife. We have a more promising destination for wildlife in the name of Bardia.
You can expect to discover the species of wildlife in the Bardia National Park that you didn’t get to witness in Chitwan, making animal sightings much easier than Chitwan.
Today after breakfast we walk into the forest in search of the Bengal tiger. The half-day walk in the forest provides an opportunity to encounter many wild animals including the Bengal tiger as Bardia is one of the best places for tiger spotting.
In the afternoon after lunch, you will be taken for a walk into the local village of Tharu people. The evening will be nice as you participate with the local Tharu people in a cultural program.
Today you will experience the Elephant back ride, bird watching, and canoe/boat ride just like at Chitwan National Park.
We will have breakfast and depending upon your flight schedule, which is usually late afternoon we drive towards the Airport at Nepalgunj. Arrive in Kathmandu and stroll around the old markets of Kathmandu like Ason, Indra chowk, and Thamel for souvenirs.
Our airport representative will assist and transfer you to the airport for your scheduled flight back to your hometown.