A Tharu village that learned to host the world
Before the 1950s the Tharu of Sauraha lived inside a forest few outsiders could survive. Their houses were built of reed and mud on stilted floors, their fields carved from the jungle, and malaria kept most hill people away. After DDT spraying cleared malaria and the hills poured settlers into Chitwan, the forest shrank fast and the park was created in 1973 to save what was left. Families lost access to much of the forest they had used for grass, wood and grazing.
Sauraha grew as the park's front door. The first visitors in the 1970s and 1980s slept in simple huts and walked or rode into the park with Tharu guides who knew every rhino trail. Over the following decades the village turned many of its fields into guesthouses, and Tharu families who once cut thatch in the park became nature guides, boatmen and cooks. Many of today's best guides grew up in the villages around Sauraha and learned the forest from their parents.
Conservation and community are tied together here. Since 1997 a buffer zone around the park has shared part of park revenue with local user groups, and community forests such as Baghmara near Sauraha were replanted on land that had been bare. Rhinos now wander through these forests at night, which is good news for the species and a real worry for farmers whose crops they eat. Electric fences and night watch huts are part of village life.
