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[Introduction][ Sightseeing]

Area: 400 sq miles 
Tiger Population: 60 
STD Code: 056 
Best Season: March-May

The beautiful Royal Chitwan National Park is located 166km southwest of Kathmandu and nearly 204km southeast of Pokhara. The park sprawls across lushly wooded hills and is home to a variety of flora and fauna. Chitwan offers great tiger and rhino spotting opportunities. 

Getting There:The nearest airport is at Meghauly. Royal Nepal Airlines, Everest Air and Necon Air connect Chitwan to Kathmandu. The park can also be reached directly from India by road. 

Background:The name ‘Chitwan’ has several possible meanings, but the most literal translation of the two NEPALI words that make it up: chit or chita (heart) and wan or ban (jungle). Chitwan is thus ‘the heart of the jungle’.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, cultivation in the valley was deliberately prohibited by the government of Nepal in order to maintain a barrier of disease-ridden forests as a defense against the invasion of diseases from the south. Then for the century between 1846 and 1950, when the Rana prime ministers were de facto rulers of Nepal, Chitwan was declared a private hunting reserve, maintained exclusively for the privileged classes. Penalties for poaching were severe - capital punishment for killing rhino - and the wildlife in the area thus received a measure of protection.

From time to time great hunts forrhino were held during the cool, mosquito-free winter months from December to February. The Ranas invited royalty from Europe and the Princely States of India, as well as other foreign dignitaries, to take part in these grand maneuvers, which were organized on a magnificent scale, often with several hundred leopards and 15 bears from the Chitwan Valley and the surronding aeas. Naturally, after slaughter on such a scale, it took the animals several years to restore their numbers; but since the hunts were held irregularly, and in different areas, their populations gradually recovered. The main secret of their survival was the fact that habitat remained unharmed; until the end of the 1940's Chitwan contained more than 1,000 square miles of virgin forests, swamps and grasslands and the abundant fauna included wild elephant, swamp deer and water buffalo.