15 Trip for animal lovers
What about going it alone, putting on your trusty hiking boots and heading out into the national parks to go tiger spotting? Good luck with that one.
Bruce Kekule, Southeast Asia's preeminent wildlife photographer, waited 15 years before getting his first photo of a tiger.
“They stay away,” he said. “The hear you first, they smell you first, and they see you first. And they don't like humans.”
Peter Cutter, manager of the Landscape Conservation Program at the World Wide Fund for Nature's (WWF) Thailand office, said research has shown that there are at least 15 distinct tigers in a remote national park in Eastern Thailand, but seeing one is tough.
“Tigers patrol the edge of their home range for five days to two weeks, so they're never in the same place in the forest," said Cutter, who has been working in Thailand for decades but only seen a tiger on three separate occasions. "It makes being in the same proximity tricky.”
Cutter ran a wildlife tourism operation in Thailand back in the 1990s but ultimately couldn't make it work financially. He still believes there could be a market for it.
“I think it would have to be very high-end, much higher than your average backpacker day tourist. But I think there's still a niche for wildlife and tiger tourism in Thailand.”