You never know who you`ll meet in a bar in Kathmandu. Sitting in a small hotel with my friend, Karna Sakya, I wondered what I was going to do for the next few weeks before meeting a Swiss friend in a high, remote valley west of Mt. Everest. We were planning to cross the 19,300-foot Teshi Lapcha Pass into the Everest area in late-November, but it was only mid-October.
Karna, long active in wildlife work in Nepal, told me a friend would be joining us for dinner. His friend was working on the Smithsonian/World Wildlife Fund Tiger Ecology Project in the jungles of southern Nepal. In walked David Smith.
Throughout the evening David talked of his work in the Nepalese jungle. He was studying tiger dispersal patterns by means of radio telemetry. That meant the great cats were tranquilized, fitted with collars containing battery-powered radios and their movements tracked by plane, Landrover, elephant and on foot. The project was to determine if the tiger had enough protected land to assure survival in its natural habitat. At the end of the evening, Dave mentioned that he was behind in his work and needed help. Embers began to glow in the back of my mind. The embers grew into a fire, and before I knew it, I`d volunteered to join him.
I climbed off the small plane the next afternoon in Bharatpur as the sun was setting on the Terai, a vast strip of land encompassing the southern border of Nepal. A rich assortment of wildlife is found here, and at one time it supported one of the healthiest populations of malarial mosquitoes–one major reason why Nepal was never colonized by a foreign power.
With the advent of chemical pesticides and international health efforts, malaria was, for a time, completely eradicated in Nepal. That was good for people but bad for wildlife. As the rich, flat land of the Terai became hospitable for humans, people flocked down out of the steep, unproductive hill country. Vast areas of jungle and forest were cut back, seriously disturbing the natural habitat of exotic birds, the sloth bear, crocodile, rare gharial, gaur, leopard, one-horned Indian rhinoceros, and of course, the tiger and its predominant prey, the chital (spotted deer), hog deer, barking deer and majestic sambur.
The farsighted creation of the Royal Chitwan National Park in 1973 stemmed the tide of destruction and there now exists an abundance of wildlife, including the once endangered rhino and tiger.
I arrived after dark amid much excitement at the Saurah campsite. A leopard was in the area and I had just crossed several hundred yards of thick brush blissfully ignorant of any danger. We were to leave early the next morning as Dave was in hot pursuit of a tiger whose prints (pug marks) had been detected nearby. The bait had been set.
About 5 a.m., atop our elephants, we crossed the Rapti River before entering the deep sal and banyan forest and 25-foot tall jungle grass. Unlike tiger hunts of old, we rode, not as European kings or Asian maharajahs seated atop stately palaquins, but as a ragtag group of 10 sitting on crude burlap pads. Our only support were the ropes hanging from our three elephants. Nor were we destined for a comfortable treehouse, armed to the teeth while hundreds of wildeyed servants pushed a tiger to its untimely demise. We would be only two, climbing up a tree of our choice, and armed only with one small shotgun carrying a dart filled with the powerful animal tranquilizer, phenocyclidine.
I had never gone to work in the morning on an elephant before and was a little nervous as we lumbered down the steep, sandy riverbank, sliding into fast moving water which at times reached the chests of the elephants. I marveled at the control the barefooted driver exercised over this massive beast by mere toe pressure near the skull behind the ears. (Left, right, forward, backward, all dictated by toe signals and an occasional wack over the head with a stick.) The river was crossed and the hunt was on.
The poor water buffalo-bait hadn`t had a chance. It had been tied to a post just off the dirt road about one hour from camp. The elephants kneeled down so we could dismount and it was apparent the tiger had been there. What remained of the buffalo was covered with flies.
Dave and his associate, Prem Bahadur Rai, discussed their strategy by whispering and arm motions. The strategic pantomime was not intended to keep the tiger from coming after us, but to prevent it from hearing us and leaving the area. (”Oh, by all means, let`s keep the tiger close,” I thought nervously.)
The tiger is a smart and solitary animal which will avoid contact with humans under most circumstances. Indeed, on subsequent forays into the jungle, I came to worry more about wild boar, sloth bears, cobras, pythons and the dangerously unpredictable rhino.
Such was not the case this day, and I found myself backing toward the gray wall of the elephant as if its bulk would protect me should a tiger leap out suddenly. The grass, called elephant grass, is so high and dense here that the light of day barely hits the pathways tunneled out by the animals.
Once it had been established which direction the tiger had taken its meal it became guesswork as to where the tiger was. The optimum situation is that the tiger drags its meal 50 to 100 yards into the dense brush and remains, eating or sleeping.
At this point, we climbed back atop the elephants and, as quietly as possible, ventured forth in a wide arc to a point about 500 yards in and around from the kill. Dave selected a tree which would give him the best view should the tiger come our way. I was designated to hole up in a tree 30 yards behind him with instructions to watch closely where the tiger goes should the darting process be successful. Standing up on the elephant I clumsily hung onto a branch and made myself as comfortable as possible as the elephant disappeared.
(It should be mentioned that this darting process is imprecise and consequently fraught with the potential for error. The responsible approach dictates a clear and unhurried shot. If the tiger is not shot in the thick muscle of the neck, shoulder or hind quarters, it can kill him. By studying pug marks one can get a good idea as to size and weight of the animal to gauge the amount of drug to be administered. Too great a dose and the animal may die. Too little and it may wander off where it cannot be found. It could become prey to another animal or drown in the water it is normally fond of. One year before, the research team climbed down off their elephants to approach a darted tiger when it suddenly sat up and stared at them through dazed and harmless eyes. Nonetheless, it was a disconcerting experience.)
Once safely in our respective perches, the tiger trackers, known from the old days as shikaris, fanned out in a wide V direction stringing cotton cloth from bush to bush. This cloth forms a very crude funnel in which to guide the tiger to us. It is hoped that the tiger will be disturbed by the noise that would soon follow, and in leaving the area, pass close enough so a clear shot could be taken. (As I learned several days later, a cornered tiger will leave such an area in any manner it chooses.)
What happened next was madness. The shikaris had strung the ”beat cloth” and remounted the elephants near the kill, or bait site. At a given signal, they begin ”pushing the beat” toward us. The elephants somehow sensed they were approaching a tiger and trumpeted nervously while crashing down any bush or small tree that got in their way while the men yelled and screamed loudly.
This cacophony did not go on long before I saw Dave stand up and point his gun downward. There was a loud ”pop” and flurry of movement in the grass below; a few seconds of wild thrashing off to my left and then silence. The tiger had fallen.
I climbed down onto the waiting elephant and we hurried to where the grass had gone still. One of Dave`s assistants yelled that the tiger was there. I tried to control my panic and excitement as I clawed through the bush to the nearby voices.
There lying before me was a magnificent female tiger. In a few minutes I gained trust in the drug and approached. She measured 8 feet, 6 inches from head to tail and weighed 350 to 400 pounds. She was breathing very heavily and her eyes were open. Her fur was short, tough and bristlelike near the skin but like the finest Chinese carpet on the outside. Her whiskers were long and taut like violin strings.
The powerful drug frequently sent her into convulsions, and as Dave fitted the collar around her massive neck, I continually monitored her temperature and cooled her down with buckets of water from a nearby stream.
After several hours she slept soundly. The collar was securely fitted and the lithium battery-powered transmitter was set to a frequency on our portable receiver.
We retreated to a safe distance as evening approached and waited atop the elephants to be sure nothing went wrong when the tiger awoke. I found myself reflecting, under the stars, on the amazing events of the day when, finally, after several stumbling attempts, the great beast got up and blended into the darkness.
That was not always the way a tiger hunt would turn out. Two days later, I was up in a tree waiting for the action to begin. Sitting directly above a small stream, I could hear the elephants and shikaris begin the ”push.”
Looking down, I saw a small orange spot in the grass. Out stepped a baby tiger no more than two feet long. Then a rustle and another cub emerged. And then another. I couldn`t believe my good fortune. The cubs were oblivious to me and I did nothing to betray that state of affairs.
Foremost in my mind was a story I had heard at camp the night before about a Nepalese researcher who had been pulled from a tree by an angry tigress protecting her cubs.
The tiger had been darted, collared and rejoined by her cubs. The researcher had remained in the tree to observe the reunion when he was spotted by the mother. After being collared, tigers are in a mood most foul and the mother wanted to make sure her cubs didn`t suffer the same fate.
Tigers can`t climb trees, but driven by fury, can get up pretty far. Unable to reach the poor fellow by standing and roaring, the tigress retreated about 50 yards to get a running start. With a mighty leap she reached the man and pulled him from the tree. Mercifully knocked unconscious, his leg was ripped to the bone, but he lived to tell the tale. Content only to protect her young, the tigress left him alone.
He was about 18 feet up in his tree and, until then, that had been the accepted margin of safety.
So as I found myself in a similar situation, I quickly surveyed my perch and decided to suspend further breathing.
The elephants were very close and their frantic trumpeting betrayed the proximity of a large tiger. Watching the cute little cubs move off into the dark undergrowth, I barely had time for a sigh when my reverie was shattered by a primordial roar nearly flinging me out of my tree. To this day, I cannot describe that sound adequately, but the expression ”blood running cold”
surely has its origin in an experience like this.
Frozen, I watched the grass move violently off to my right. A large tiger came crashing through the beat cloth, exploding through the high grass, and ran across the stream directly beneath me.
It was over. My heart was still pounding and I could hear the elephants crashing toward me while men chattered nervously, wondering aloud where the tiger was. She had escaped with her cubs. I had no regrets.
On this day, and throughout my days in the jungle, I had been privileged to hear, see and experience life with one of Earth`s most magnificent animals. An abiding sense of good fortune has been forever etched within me.
