Chitwan Honeymoon Package

A twenty-five minute flight to Bharatpur rather than six hours on the road, and a transfer to a lodge on the riverbank or the park boundary - a private cottage rather than a room in a block, with its own verandah and enough space between it and the next one. The lodges that do this well are quiet, and quiet is the point. You have the afternoon to settle in, and then the walk down to the Rapti for sunset over the park, which is the fixed point every day here arranges itself around. Your naturalist joins you at dinner to plan the next two days around where the animals have actually been.

Out at first light in a small private jeep with your own naturalist, which is the difference between a good Chitwan morning and a full vehicle at nine o'clock. Chitwan holds one of the strongest populations of greater one-horned rhino in the world and a sighting is close to certain, often at short range; tiger, gaur, sloth bear and leopard are here too and are a matter of luck. Back through the heat of the day for lunch and a long, genuinely empty afternoon - the pool, the verandah, the river. Out again in the late light when the animals move a second time, and dinner on the riverbank.

A dugout canoe on the Rapti as the mist lifts off the water, drifting downstream past gharial and mugger crocodile on the banks with kingfishers and storks along the edges. It is the quietest hour of the trip and the best one for birds. Afterwards a guided walk in the buffer-zone forest with an armed naturalist, on foot and at ground level, which feels entirely different from the jeep. The afternoon goes to a Tharu village - the indigenous people of this part of the Terai - and there is a cultural programme after dinner, followed by a private riverside dinner set up for the two of you.

One last early drive into the park, which is often the best of the trip because by now the naturalist knows exactly what you still want to see. Back to the lodge for a proper breakfast with no hurry. The short flight from Bharatpur puts you into Kathmandu in the middle of the day, in time for an onward connection or an afternoon in the city. Three full days here is genuinely better than two, and easy to add.