Sauraha

The Chitwan valley was for centuries a place people avoided. Dense sal forest and grassland along the Rapti and Narayani rivers carried malaria so severe that the hill population regarded the inner Terai as deadly for much of the year, and it was the Tharu, long resident here and with a degree of inherited resistance, who farmed and fished its edges. The forest suited the rulers in Kathmandu: from the 19th century the Rana prime ministers kept Chitwan as a private hunting reserve, bringing viceroys and royal guests on elephant-back shoots that killed tigers and rhinos in large numbers.

Malaria control in the 1950s and 1960s, backed by international programmes, changed everything. Settlers came down from the hills, cleared forest for rice and mustard, and the valley's population multiplied within a generation; rhino numbers collapsed under the pressure of poaching and lost habitat. In response a protected area was declared, and in 1973 Chitwan became Nepal's first national park, with an army presence to guard it. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984.

Sauraha, a small farming settlement of the Bachhauli area on the north bank of the Rapti, happened to sit at a convenient crossing point opposite the park. Lodges and guide services grew along its road from the 1980s as wildlife tourism developed, slowly at first and then quickly. Community forests on the village side were handed to local user groups, and buffer-zone rules directed a share of park income back to the villages. The conflict of the Maoist years and later crises interrupted the trade more than once, and anti-poaching patrols, first raised when rhino numbers fell to a few dozen, remain central to the park's management.

The older culture here is Tharu. Their villages are built of mud and timber with long ridged roofs, the outer walls sometimes decorated with patterns pressed into the clay, and grain stored in woven bins inside. Tharu families traditionally fished the rivers, gathered from the forest and farmed rice, and their calendar peaks at Maghi in January, the new year, with feasting, visits and dancing. The stick dance, performed in lines to drums with the sticks struck together, is the best known of several dances now shown to visitors as well as at village celebrations.

Since the 1960s the valley has also become mixed. Brahmin, Chhetri, Gurung, Magar and Newar families came down from the hills and brought their festivals with them, so Dashain, Tihar and Holi are all kept here, and the village looks towards Bharatpur for schools, hospitals and politics. Nepali is the common language, Tharu the household one in many homes.

Tourism has shaped manners in the village. Guiding is a respected local profession, often passed between relatives, and many guides are naturalists with long experience of the park. Elephants, once central to both the royal hunts and early tourism, are now a subject of debate: riding has fallen away as visitors and operators turn to jeeps, walks and canoes, and captive-elephant welfare is discussed openly. Visitors are a normal part of village life, but the settlements behind the strip remain conservative, and people dress and behave accordingly.

Sauraha is a village of a few thousand people within Ratnanagar municipality, and the surrounding Chitwan district is one of the most densely settled parts of the Terai, with Bharatpur — one of Nepal's larger cities — as its centre. Two economies run side by side here: farming, with rice in the monsoon, mustard, maize and vegetables in the dry months, and buffalo kept for milk; and tourism, which employs guides, drivers, cooks, cleaners and boatmen, mostly from the surrounding villages.

The day starts before dawn, because that is when wildlife moves and when the fields are cool. Jeeps and walking groups leave at first light, return by mid-morning, and the village is quiet through the hot middle of the day; activity picks up again in the late afternoon, when canoes go out and people walk to the riverbank for sunset. Lodges fill in the October-to-March season and much of the village works short hours in the monsoon, when some businesses close.

Living beside a national park has costs. Rhinos and deer raid crops, elephants damage houses, and people are killed or injured in encounters in most years; buffer-zone committees run electric fences, compensation schemes and community forests to manage it. Electricity, mobile coverage and a good road link have all arrived in recent decades, and many households also depend on money sent home by relatives working in the Gulf, Malaysia or India.

Everyday eating is daal bhaat: rice with lentil soup, a seasonal vegetable curry, greens and pickle, eaten twice a day and served in every lodge and roadside kitchen. On the Terai the pickles are hot, mustard oil is the usual cooking fat, and river fish appears often.

Tharu cooking is the local specialism and worth seeking out. Ghonghi, freshwater snails cooked in a spiced broth and sucked straight from the shell, is its best-known dish; dhikri are steamed rice-flour dumplings, sometimes shaped by hand into long twists, eaten with chutney; sidhara and sukuti use dried fish and dried meat pounded with spices. Chutneys ground with chilli, garlic, tomato and sesame on a stone slab accompany almost everything, and the traditional home-brewed rice beer is made for festivals.

Visitor food in the village follows Nepal's tourist pattern: momos, chow mein, fried rice, curries, and Western dishes at the riverfront restaurants. Tea shops in the lanes sell milk tea, samosas and pakauda, and sel roti, the sweet fried rice-flour ring, appears around festivals. The Terai's summer fruit — mangoes, litchis and jackfruit — is sold by the roadside, and sugarcane juice is pressed on carts at Tandi Bazaar and along the highway.