The first thing you realize when you start following a tracker is how useless you’d be would something happen to your guide. He can smell animals before they come into view; he can see monkeys hidden in trees when all you see are leaves; he can pick partial paw prints from leaves and dirt. And of course, he can tell the difference between poop from a constipated tiger and poop from a tiger who recently ate and is therefore no threat (except for the previously explained exceptions to this rule).

A good guide can see territory scratches on trees where all you see is missing bark. He can see male rhino’s feet dragging as he’s carried around by a female in heat, as he mounts her, but she nonchalantly continues to graze. He knows what your bear had for breakfast. All in all, he can see the invisible, smell what’s yet to come, and hear things you previously thought were only audible to dogs. It comes as no surprise, that even the dumbest westerner quickly assumes his/her role: your goal is to follow your guide as a blind person a seeing-eye dog. Your survival directly depends on it, because the skills you developed in 15-20 years of schooling are completely useless in the real world.

You may be surprised to know that tracking an animal is not only serious business, but an incredibly boring affair for 99% of the time– that is until you actually sense a tiger or a rhino, breathing becomes labored, and you start replaying reruns of Animals Gone Wild.

A rhino who doesn’t want to attack you will at least warn you of his presence. It’s an unmistakable, subtle yet deliberate cough. The kind of cough you make in a public restroom when someone approaches your stall and you’re somewhat busy. It’s a “I don’t want to tell you outright, but there’s someone here. Proceed no further”. We got a few of those grunts throughout and were wise enough to do a 180.

Tigers on the other hand don’t warn. They try to scare their prey to go one way, while they move around and ambush them. We quickly found that, while we all wanted to see a tiger, we would be content with a National Geographic special. A tiger’s grunt is one scary sound– the entire forest reacts to it. Even if you didn’t hear the grunt, you’d know there was a tiger around. It’s the sound made a few seconds before the teacher shows up unannounced to a classroom. Everyone’s playing about, and as soon as someone spots her, there’s the distinct shuffle of papers and bags, followed by a sepulchral silence as everyone tries to look busy. There’s a flurry of birds followed by a sound distinguishable only by the lack of chirping. There’s the swoosh of forest as the deer run and hide. And there’s the scuffle of branches as every monkey in the entire forest climbs up the nearest tree, and then quietly peeks from atop the highest branch. In our case, there was only the sound of gastrointestinal distress, followed by a heart rate rhythm only attainable when you’re dehydrated at the end of a really long race.

We had various similar encounters with tigers throughout, and I can safely say the next time I see one (I hope) will be in a circus. a zoo with highly reinforced bars, or on TV.

We did have other memorable sights, such as crocodiles from across a watering hole, lots of deer, and a few forgiving rhinos, a baby rhino, lots of monkeys, and lots of animal shit. The most enlightening experience in 5 days happened when a wild boar ran across the brush while we were tracking a tiger. One of our guides took off running with no warning, and we quickly realized this was truly every man for himself.

There is something inherently wrong with chasing down tigers with sticks. It’s as if a band of mice decided to start a cat tracking expedition armed with nothing but broken toothpicks. Obviously, mice have better sense than men.

The reality of the situation doesn’t really hit home until you’ve canoed to the deepest part of the jungle, and are now safely on the wild animal part of the park, with nothing but a couple bottles of water. Everything is cheery until the guide’s tone turns somber and he lays down the law of the land. “There are serious threats on this side of the park. You may have heard of 3 villagers being attacked by a tiger last night, or a rhino stampeed on tourists yesterday morning.” What the fuck? This was obviously not explained in the colorful brochure just a few days earlier. “There are four things than can kill you in our park: sloth bears, elephants, rhinos, and tigers.” Somehow he forgot to include the 23 varieties of snakes in Chitiwan, but I assumed their threat was miniscule, so I ignored them. “Each animal has distinct ways of attacking, so pay attention”. At this point we partially stopped breathing, looked at each other, and tried very hard not to pass out. The guides then proceeded to explain what to do in every situation.

• Rhinos are very aggressive. They will chase you down and trample you. They will quietly lay waiting for you and side-swipe you. Oh yeah, and they can run 40kph. Luckily for us, they have horrible eye sight, though a keen sense of smell and hearing. So the trick is to throw something at them that smells like you, run in big zig-zags, and climb the nearest tree over 6 feet tall.
• Asian elephants become aggressive for as of yet unexplained and unpredictable reasons. They will chase you, hit you, trample you, and just plain grind you to a pulp. Thankfully, they cannot maneuver very well in dense forest, so pray that you’re not in open grasslands, because they too can outrun you.
• Sloth bears can climb and run, so you can’t outrun or out climb them. They sense fear and their attack is proportional to your fear. The trick is too stand together as a group, appear tall, and hit them with your sticks.
• Bengali tigers are gentle, kind, and shy– that is, unless they want to kill you. Reasons for attacking a human (which is a very easy prey) include: old tiger (lazy), sick tiger (in the head), has previously had human (we’re fat and taste good), or they’re just really hungry. So pretty much, whenever the hell he pleases. He can climb, run, go through dense forest– you name it. Lucky for us, we have a variety of deities to pray to. Hindus have hundreds of them, and Nepalis don’t fall far behind. The trick is to make sure your poop doesn’t upset your god, and hope you included someone besides your wife (who will also be eaten) as your life insurance beneficiary.

After that vivid speech, and smiles long wiped from our faces, we rapidly armed ourselves with the nearest sticks and started a 6 hour walk through the dense forest.

So… we survived after having trekked about 80kms in 4.5 days, with lots of stories and just a few blisters.

Internet is (as usual) excrutiatingly slow, and we leave in a few minutes for a 2 hour elephant ride. I promise a real post in less than 24 hours, but suffice to say that we had a great time, and Yano almost got trampled by a charging rhino (me… I was high up in a tree screaming like a little girl).

We’re in the Chitawan Reserve in Nepal, a 900 sq km reserve with elephants, rhinos, tigers, and more. Antoine, Anais, and us have decided to embark on a 4.5 day trek through the reserve (with two local guides)– all for $82 including meals and lodging. It’s the ultimate wild life viewing trek, which may render us incapacitated after walking for 6-7 hours a day, not to mention the possibility of being lower on the food chain for the first time.

Anais is worried because our Lonely Planet guidebook warns of the possibility of being trampled to death by rhinocerouses– but this happens once every few years, and mostly to a stupid tourist venturing inside the park without local guides. Antoine says he would like to see a tiger upfront because he relishes the idea of pooping his pants in fear. I, on the other hand, would prefer to be chased to death by a tiger, than being hit by a drunk driver while cycling at home. Death by tiger sounds much better in an eulogy than cycling accident.

(Holy shit, I just saw an elephant go by the dirt road next to the internet cafe! There was a local sitting on top of a big pile of hay. That’s definitely not something I’ve ever seen while sitting in front of a computer).

Crap, I forgot what I was going to write about. Anyways, we’re taking off for a few days. If we don’t write back in 5-6 days, we’ve probably outrunning some large mammal.

Wish us luck!

p.s. I promise to upload pictures when we return to Delhi, and hopefully insert some of them in past blog entries to describe things better. I know nobody wants to be reading my blog, just seeing cool pictures, but you’ll have to put up with my prose for now.