9 August 2025

Tigers on foot in Nepal and so much more! – Wildlife Watching Expeditions

This is a trip report from an exploratory trip to Nepal’s lowland forests in May 2024 to see if we could set up a tiger & leopard focused tour in Nepal. We visited Bardia, Chitwan and Koshi Tappu National Parks over a four week period. This resulted in many sightings of 5 different cat species, a surprise rarity for Nepal and a decent amount of other mammal species!

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Trip report – Tigers on foot (Nepal) – Wildlife Watching Expeditions – May 2024

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Wildlife Watching Expeditions
Wildlife Watching Expeditions was founded in 2023 by friends who share the same passion: wildlife, adventure and conservation. We love searching for wildlife and exploring the (few) wild corners that are left on this planet. We often focus on rare/elusive carnivores because they normally only thrive in healthy and biodiverse ecosystems with plenty of prey. In this human dominated world, this doesn’t mean that we will only take you to uninhabited wildernesses. We are realistic and want to promote co-existence between wildlife and people, since in our view, this is the only way wildlife will have a future amidst an ever growing human population. We will take you to unspoilt natural areas, but more often find ourself in the middle of rural communities, or even near large metropolitan cities, to see the most unlikely species thrive in a shared landscape. Wolf packs now live within 15km of the city centre of Rome, the highest leopard densities in the world can be found within the city limits of Mumbai and the crowded lowlands of Nepal offer some stunning opportunities to see tigers in the wild. Co-existence is not easy though, habitat loss is a major threat for all wildlife and human wildlife conflict, poaching and intolerance are the main causes of declining populations for a lot of species. We want to make a difference and combine sustainable wildlife watching with education and conservation. Therefore a percentage of our profits will go to conservation projects on the ground at the destinations we visit. This is to ensure that local communities and wildlife populations benefit from our trips and to ensure that both have a future on this beautiful planet.
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5 Comments

  • 9 August 2025
    ddahan47

    This is amazing, well done Jillian!

  • 12 August 2025
    Flemming Versloot

    Amazing trip report to read Jillian. How is encountering tigers on foot? I heard on the mammalwatching podcast and in India that most tigers don’t see humans as prey, but what is was your backup if one does decide to become unfriendly?

    • 16 September 2025
      Wildlife Watching Expeditions

      Thanks! By far most tigers (same as most wild animals nowadays) will avoid humans (especially on foot). This means that we normally need to try to be quiet and discrete to have a chance to observe the tigers. During the rare occasions that we bump a tiger at close range or we find an individual that reacts differently, we make a quick assessment of the situation and have some safety measures in place if something goes wrong. The exact action taken is very dependent on the situation. All our guides are extremely experienced in walking dangerous game on foot and they have accumulated thousands of encounters with large cats (lion, leopard, tiger, puma) in the wild.

  • 16 September 2025
    vnsankar

    Great report. Any chance you photographed the Hispid Hares in Bardia? Those are a genuine rarity to observe.

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