By Siraj Khan
Nepalgunj, Oct. 4: "As four Royal Bengal tigers surrounded us, we immediately climbed up a tree nearby to save ourselves. We called for help from the tree top for one and a half hours but received no response. When we had lost all hope to live, a team from the national park rescued us with the help of an elephant." Setu Oli experienced this near death situation on Saturday in Gavar of Banke district.
"We had gone into the forest to graze the cattle," said Kalika Khadka, who also experienced the frightful situation. "While we were talking, the goats and buffaloes suddenly started running away as four tigers were closing on us."

Khadka said that they climbed the tree in no time and shouted for assistance. The four man-eater tigers were guarding around the tree.
"Thankfully, the National Park officials were able to chase the tigers away with the help of a Mahout and elephant," said Khadka.

All three of the herders including Oli, Khadka, and Hira Khadka of Gavar in Rapti Sonari Rural Municipality-1 said that they were rendered utterly hopeless until the rescue team showed up.
Stating that all three of them received a new life, Oli said had the team from the national park not heard us, we would have been attacked by the tigers. "We are still shivering. It is hard to believe that we survived this close encounter with the deadly tigers," said Oli.

The three herders had encountered the tigers on the road leading to Kharchetal in the forest around one kilometre south from the highway between Gavar and Sikta.
Kalika said that after the tigers could not climb the tree, they turned to the cattle.

Meanwhile, chief conservation officer of Banke National Park Shyam Kumar Shah said that the army from the national park had successfully rescued the herders from tigers with the help of the elephant.
"As the elephant was nearby, we were able to rescue them immediately. The situation could have gone awry otherwise," said Shah.

On September 11 evening, a tiger had snatched an Indian national working at a Gavar-based hotel from the highway itself.
The national park had deployed two elephants, a team of Nepali Army, and a technical team to trap the tigers.

While a calf was tied in the middle of the forest to lure the tigers, the team could not take the tigers under control as they ate the calf only after six days.
The camera installed to watch the movements of the tigers had also captured all four of them in a single frame.