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.