Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand, January 2025
Twenty years ago if I told someone I was a ‘mammalwatcher’ I would invariably be met by a perplexed look that radiated concern for my mental health. How things have changed! Last weekend in Kaeng Krachan National Park the mammalwatchers were out in force and it felt like every second person I spoke to was there for the mammals, knew this website and knew who I was. Obviously this did wonders for my fragile ego but it also demonstrated how popular this hobby has become. And the mammalwatchers were not disappointed: we had the best three days of mammalwatching I have enjoyed in SE Asia, outside of Borneo at least.
Kaeng Krachan National Park is a 3 hour drive from Bangkok. My Bangkok-based friends Jirayu ‘Tour’ Ekkul, from Wild Encounter Thailand (WET) and Coke Smith organized the trip (you can listen to them here on the mammalwatching podcast). Another Bangkokian – Jackie Shen – joined us on her very first mammalwatching trip (but not – she promises – her last). And Jirayu bought three of his ever growing WET team along. It had the makings of a fun weekend.
I was hoping to see Robinson’s Banded Langurs in the park. Anything else would be a bonus. I would keep an eye open for Fea’s Muntjac (which are occasionally seen crossing the road) or for a Banded Linsang or Marbled Cat, which are both seen every once in a very long while. I also hoped to see a black Leopard, which Kaeng Krachan has become famous for, as well as the Sun Bears that regularly visit the campsites. I had missed the bears during my two previous visits.
But, I told myself, I must not to get too obsessed: this trip was about enjoying time with friends as much as it was about the mammals. As I write this I realize how misguided such thinking was. Inconceivable! Whatever intentions I had, Kaeng Krachan decided to remind me that, no matter how great the company, a visit there is all about the mammals.
Kaeng Krachan is Thailand’s largest national park and covers almost 3000 square kilometres. A part of the Thai Western Forest Complex, it is carved from the beautiful deciduous mountain forest that straddles the Thai-Myanmar border. There is just one road in the park open to tourists: a 30km drive that leads to the top of a mountain. The Ban Krang campsite is about half way along the road, which ends at the upper campsite – Phanoen Thung – 1200 meters above sea level with spectacular views into Myanmar.
I had visited Kaeng Krachan twice before in August and October. On both occasions the upper 15 kilometres or so of the road was closed was closed, as it usually is during the wet season. A lot of the park’s best mammalwatching happens higher up the mountain and so I was excited to visit during the dry season with access to the whole road.
The park was very busy with both Thai tourists, still on their Christmas and New Year break, and with international visitors, including several groups of mammalwatchers.
Visiting the Park
It is straightforward to rent a car in Thailand and visit the park independently, though you might want to rent a 4WD as one section of the road in particular is quite steep and could be difficult to drive up after rain. You can camp inside the park (both campsites were packed with people when were were there) or stay at one of several lodges just outside. We spent two nights at the excellent Ban Makaa lodge and one night – because Ban Makaa was full – at the new Tree Riverside Resort (which was comfortable but more of a hotel than a nature lodge).
If you don’t want to drive yourself you can arrange for a guided tour or rent an open 4WD and driver from the park. The forest here is very dense. Though you can spot monkeys and gibbons in the trees, there is little scope to look for terrestrial species from the road. Most mammals are seen around a couple of waterholes that can be viewed from the road, on the road itself, or around the two campsites. Both Jirayu and Coke know the park well, and they also know the rangers and many of the local guides. This was a great advantage in getting the very latest information on sightings while we were there.
The park gates open at 5am and close at 7pm. We spent Friday afternoon in the park and all of Saturday inside the park with Coke, mainly hanging around the upper campsite looking for Robinson’s Banded Langurs. Coke returned to Bangkok on Sunday and Jirayu and his team took Jackie and me around in a park jeep driven by the excellent Beckham (yes he was named after the football player). We spent a good deal of Sunday checking culverts for bats before looking for leopards in the afternoon. I took the road to the summit one last time for a few hours on Monday morning, still hoping for a Fea’s Muntjac, before Jirayu took me to the airport.
The Mammalwatching
The upper stretch of road, above the lower campsite, is open only to traffic in one direction, with the direction changing every few hours. So you can drive up the road between 6am and 9am, but then have to wait to go back down after, say 10am. I don’t remember the schedule but you get the picture. We spent most of the weekend along the upper stretch of road and around the upper campsite. There are a lot of culverts running under the road, and most are quite hard to spot from a vehicle. We checked twenty or so and most of them had bats inside (mainly two species of horseshoe bats). I don’t think there is much point in specifying which bats were in which culverts as they move around so much.
Several Leopards – both regular and melanistic – were patrolling the road and being seen every day while we were there and so we spent time trying to see them. Sun Bears were visiting the two campsites almost daily, along with several Yellow-throated Martens. Dusky Langurs are very common throughout the park, and Lar Gibbons were calling all along the upper road each morning. The Robinson’s Banded Langurs seem to be encountered mainly above the 23 km marker, with one family reported often from around the upper campsite.
Because the park gate closes at 7pm there was little scope for night drives in the park. We tried with a flashlight and thermal cope each evening as we drove out but the forest is so thick that I suspect spotlighting might be more successful on foot. Having access to the road and trails at night on foot would be an advantage of camping inside the park.
The Mammals
Over the weekend we saw 19 species of mammals, three of which were lifers for me.
1. Stump-tailed Macaque (Macaca arctoides): one troop on the road close to the entrance gate in the late morning.
2. Robinson’s Banded Langur (Presbytis robinsoni): we spent six hours hanging out at the top campsite before seeing a family of four banded langurs at 4pm that were traveling with a few Dusky Langurs. We saw at two more groups of animals along the road the following day (both above km 23). At first glance these monkeys look quite like Dusky Langurs but they are blacker and with an all black tail (compared to the grey-tailed duskys). They have bare – rather than white – skin around their eyes and white around both the top of and bottom of their mouths. Infants are a similar colour, to the adults, compared to the orange baby Dusky Langurs. A lifer for me.
3. Dusky Langur (Trachypithecus obscurus): very common along the road between the two campsites and around both campsites themselves.
4. Lar Gibbon (Hylobates lar): we heard gibbons calling many times throughout the mornings and even in the afternoons, but didn’t make a huge amount of effort to locate them. The animal in the picture was part of a small troop close to the upper campsite.
5. Gray-bellied Squirrel (Callosciurus caniceps): we had glimpses of what were likely two animals in the park but the species is abundant at Ban Makaa Lodge around the dining room.
6. Pallas’s Squirrel (Callosciurus erythraeus): good views of two animals behind the kitchen at the upper campsite.
7. Black Giant Squirrel (Ratufa bicolor): one animal posed nicely at the lower campsite, which seems to be a good spot for this species.
8. Lesser Asian False-vampire (Megaderma spasma): one of these large bats was roosting in a culvert.
9. Acuminate Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus cf. acuminatus): several culverts contained this species of horseshoe. It is likely an Acuminate Horseshoe Bat according to Thai bat guru Pipat Soisook, though they might, he thought, be Mountain Horseshoe Bats (R. chutamasae) which would have been a lifer for me. I am hoping Pipat will be able to get up there and get measurements to confirm the ID.
10. Northern Woolly Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus perniger): one of these distinctive bats was roosting inside a small dilapidated building close to the upper camp. Walk down the road from the campsite for perhaps 100 – 200 meters and you shouldd see a small building just off the right hand side of the road partially obscured by vegetation. One bat was roosting inside. The woolly horseshoe bats have been split in several directions and this one was a lifer for me.
11. Robinson’s Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus robinsoni): several culverts contained small groups of horseshoe bats that Pipat Soisook believed to be Robinson’s Horseshoe Bats. He told me these would be the northernmost record for this species.
12. Malayan Slit-faced Bat (Nycteris tragata): two of these distinctive bats were roosting in a culvert.
13. Yellow-throated Marten (Martes flavigula): we saw at least several animals during the weekend. We surprised one pair on the road, and saw another pair moving through the forest next to the road the next morning. Animals were also frequent visitors behind the kitchen at the upper camp where they forage for – and bicker over – food scraps. At one point we saw three animals in the same tree there.
14. Sun Bear (Helarctos malayanus): Kaeng Krachan is the only reliable place in the world I know of to see Sun Bears. Although I saw two on my last visit to Deramakot in Borneo the views were fleeting. So it was great to have a prolonged look of two different animals here over the weekend (one at each campsite). Five different bears regularly visit the two campsites. This guy has been named Jack Fruit.
15. Golden Jackal (Canis aureus): one on the road near the park entrance after sunset.
16. Indochinese Leopard (Panthera pardus delacouri): Leopards are reported relatively often in Kaeng Krachan and it may well be the best place in the world to see Indo-Chinese Leopards. It may also be the best place in the world to see melanistic Leopards though they are still far from common here. Jirayu had been trying to find them for 10 days before we arrived and had seen only the regular colour form. But our timing was perfect: two black Leopards were seen along the upper stretch of road every day during our visit. They appeared the day we arrived and we were not seen again for almost a week after we left. So they are far from guaranteed. But during our weekend they were actively and boldly patrolling the road. Tour saw black Leopards three days running!
Coke, Jackie and I missed one leopard by a few minutes on our first evening (I am not sure if it was a black or regular flavor). And we missed a melanistic animal by five minutes the next afternoon.
On the third day we were driving down the road at about 4pm and a parked car alerted us to a leopard that had crossed the road seconds before we arrived. Jirayu decided the leopard was likely moving up the road and we should reverse 100m up the hill and wait. This was a bold move but exactly the right one. Because 5 minutes later the animal returned to the road in front of us and casually strode past our jeep. Absolute magic! Jackie took a video on her phone of the encounter which shows what a superb encounter we had. The car behind us belong to mammalwatcher Yon Perez. The smile on his face was almost as dramatic as the leopard!
On my last morning Jirayu spotted an animal sitting next to the road just after sunrise. We reversed back but it had already gone.
17. Northern Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus): one on the road towards the park entrance after sunset.
18. Gaur (Bos gaurus): Gaur are regularly seen around the waterholes later in the dry season but we were still a little early for them. We saw the rear end of one animal next to a waterhole at around sunset.
19. Sambar (Rusa unicolor): I saw one animal through my thermal scope after dark close to a waterhole.
Stuff I Missed
There are a great many species in Kaeng Krachan that we didn’t see. At least one mammalwatcher saw a Fea’s Muntjac crossing the road early one morning, and Jirayu had seen one a few days earlier. Good to know this species is being seen again in the park but given all the leopard activity along the road it is perhaps not a surprise we missed it. Another mammalwatcher reported seeing two separate Banded Linsangs along the road (somewhere near kilometer 15) at about 6.30pm which is a remarkable record. Linsangs are very rarely reported from the park but had been seen once or twice recently in the daytime along a trail close the lower campsite. The same couple saw what was probably a Mainland Leopard Cat on the road the following morning.
Marbled Cats are also spotted very rarely and there is an even slimmer chance to run into a Mainland Clouded Leopard or even a Tiger. Others saw Elephants while we were there and we saw plenty of fresh sign. Presumably, like the Gaur, they may become easier to spot as the dry season intensifies.
The short nature trail at Ban Makaa often produces Slow Lorises. We walked it once and saw nothing but others saw a loris that night. I also looked around the small lake at the lodge for the Greater Bandicoot Rat that had been seen recently but I was not lucky. Lesser Mouse Deer, Northern Tree Shrews and Western Striped-squirrels are apparently easy to see from the bird blind at Ban Makaa.
Final Thoughts
I have been visiting Thailand for more than 20 years and during those first few visits any sighting of a carnivore was something very special. A Sun Bear would have been a once in a lifetime sight. As would a Leopard. To see two bears, a Leopard and seven Yellow-throated Marten in a weekend is extraordinary and hopefully a sign of how well the park is protecting its wildlife and how responsible the visitors are. Indeed we saw no one bothering the animals – from leopards to langurs – during our stay. So I have a hunch that Kaeng Krachan, along with the other parks in Thailand, will continue to get better and better.
Thank You
Thank you to Jackie – Thailand’s newest mammalwatcher – for her enthusiasm (even for the bats) and sharp spotting skills. And a very big thank you to Jirayu and Coke for showing us around and showing us so many mammals. They were great company as always.
If you want a guided tour to Kaeng Krachan or elsewhere in Thailand, or to look for Eden’s Whales out of Bangkok then Wild Encounter Thailand are the people to talk to. I am already planning to return this year.
Post author
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.