At the end of a 7-hour “tourist” bus ride (filled at least 90% by locals) through the bumpy hellscape that is the Nepalese highway system, we arrived at the Sauraha bus stop on a cloudy early afternoon in late June 2025. The past advice proved right: if you can afford to, just take the flight to Bharatpur, less than an hour away from the many accommodation offerings catering to the guests of Chitwan National Park. We stayed at Chitwan Village Resort, whose owner kindly picked us up at the bus stop on short notice and arranged all our activities. We decided to get the $250 private full-day jeep safari for the next day to maximize our time there, as the park closes to jeep safaris for the 3-month monsoon season, starting around the end of June. As I walked around town that afternoon, touts in the town center offered me safaris to the “community forest” and said that there were no safaris in the national park. I ended up trying a 2-hour offering of theirs to compare it to the national park experience the next day, and it wasn’t much to compete with. We drove into a fairly typical-looking forest for the area and saw some fairly typical wildlife: some spotted deer, storks, and a few smaller birds. Gazing across the river later and seeing such a similar landscape, I wondered whether the park would live up to its reputation as a wildlife haven or end up “boring,” especially with the monsoon rains forecasted to hit. The next morning, we crossed the river on a small wooden canoe and officially entered the national park, walking the short distance to the jeep parking lot.

So, what is safari like during the monsoon season? The biggest downside was that rivers and watering holes, often the hotspots for sightings during high season, were often devoid of any visible wildlife. Crocodiles and gharials were undoubtedly present in many of those we visited, but all we could see was one tail/snout sticking out of the high brown water. A rhino herd was also present in one watering hole, but too far from the jeep path to make out any distinguishing features. The morning sadly featured these sightings few and far between as we made our way through the different ecosystems of riverine forest, open grasslands, cotton tree groves, and finally the dense sal hardwood forest. I began to lose some hope, further compounded by the rainstorm that struck later in the morning. Strangely enough, the rain brought about the first redeeming wildlife sighting of the day – a huge band of macaques playing in the rain. We had so much fun watching their antics, especially the occasional high dive from the trees into the puddles (some intentional, others caused by their playmates shaking them off their branches). Spotted deer, wild boars, and peacocks each turned up at some point, ignoring the monkeys and trudging through the flooded forest. Later on, some army scouts hitched a ride on our jeep and kept umbrellas over the front opening of the jeep to keep us all a little drier. Army outposts are the only available restroom breaks during a safari here, and they are off limits for cameras. We settled at the gharial breeding center to wait out the storm, which had luckily passed by around noontime. After that, we reached the lookout tower where we stopped for lunch. The day had been nice, the landscapes beautiful in their own simple way, and the life forms diverse, but we would have to wait for the afternoon to experience the true richness of this national park.

Our jeep continued into the western part of the park, where the hills loomed a little closer and elephant-high grass became extremely dense. As we were about to find out, this was the rhino’s favorite food to graze in, and we chanced upon two in this area, crossing the jeep path in front of us and continuing on grazing. I found it so interesting how a rhino so visibly constituted a whole little ecosystem on its own, with countless insects inhabiting its skin being preyed on by the ever-present birds that ride on its back. In the same area, we spotted a big herd of spotted deer blocking the road, visibly cautious and ready to run. Our guide told us the loud cries coming from the nearby forest were from a deer warning its neighbors that a tiger was on the loose nearby. Later, we saw an endangered Indian hog deer, Axis porcinus, grazing in the same big expanse of grass as the rhinos did (featured picture). That grass must’ve been really good! But the rarest sighting was to come as we sped back east towards Sauraha. We had to stop our jeep’s rampage through the forest when we saw another jeep stopped on the path, its guide shushing us frantically. They’d spotted the Bengal tiger. Sure enough, after maybe 5 minutes staring at the path ahead, we saw that bright orange figure, probably a few hundred meters away, cross the path for about 5 seconds. We proceeded forward and waited nearly another hour, but to no avail; the tiger never returned to the path. Other cool sightings throughout the day included a Bengal monitor lizard basking high up in a tree, langur monkeys and their extremely long jumps, a woodpecker in action, a snakebird flying into a lake, peacocks (and hens and chicks), the bright blue kingfisher, the emerald dove, the mynah bird, and even the wild chicken. The forests themselves were also a lot more beautiful and multi-layered than the ones in the community forest, with dense underbrush and a rich selection of vines wrapping around the trees. They seemed to glisten with life, and there was a diverse selection of plant species as well. The sal wood is especially significant for the Nepalese as many of their famous woodwork masterpieces in the Kathmandu Valley are made up of this very wood. Up in the hills, our guide told us common sightings would also include wild elephants, Indian bison, and bears. Chitwan is such a diverse complex of rich ecosystems, but one that also feels very typical of the region, like what most of the Terai would have been like without human interference. Sometimes, it can feel boring when wildlife luck isn’t on your side the entire time, but it pays off in some very unforgettable moments.