Bardiya National Park

A flight of about an hour takes us west to Nepalgunj on the Terai plain, and from there it is two to three hours north-west by road to the park. Bardiya covers about 968 square kilometres of sal forest, grassland and riverine habitat on the Karnali, and it is the largest national park in the western Terai. It is markedly less visited than Chitwan - getting here takes a flight and a drive, which is exactly why it stays quiet - and by most accounts it is the better park for wildlife. We check in at a lodge near Thakurdwara on the park boundary, and there is time in the afternoon for an orientation walk and the sunset over the river.

The morning is spent on foot with an armed naturalist, which in Bardiya is much the best way to look for tiger: slow, quiet, reading tracks and alarm calls, moving through the sal forest and along the riverbeds where the animals drink. Tiger numbers here have risen substantially over the past fifteen years and Bardiya now offers the best chance of a wild tiger anywhere in Nepal - never guaranteed, but genuinely realistic. In the afternoon we go out by jeep into the grasslands, where rhino, swamp deer, wild elephant and nilgai are all regularly seen. Evenings are spent at the lodge or on one of the machans overlooking a waterhole.

A day on and around the Karnali. A boat trip or a gentle raft down the river gives the best chance of Gangetic river dolphin - one of very few freshwater dolphin populations left anywhere, and hanging on here in small numbers - along with gharial and mugger crocodile on the banks and a long list of waterbirds. In the afternoon we go into the Babai valley on the eastern side of the park, a broad grassland basin that is one of the strongholds for rhino and swamp deer and sees almost no visitors at all. The scale of Bardiya is what registers: it is nearly twice the size of Chitwan with a fraction of the traffic.

One last early drive or walk into the park - the best sightings often come on the final morning, when the naturalist knows exactly what you still want to see. Back to the lodge for breakfast, then the two-to-three-hour drive to Nepalgunj and the flight to Kathmandu, arriving in the afternoon. The best months here are March to early June, when the grass has been cut and burned and visibility in the park is at its highest.