Survivorman | India | Les Stroud

[Music] well if anything it's good to make all this noise as i walk through big part of how i need to be when i'm out here is is walking with purpose projecting a real confidence level in other words not looking like prey [Music] [Music] surviving all around the world i've had to face a lot of different challenges physical basics are always the same food water shelter the ability to navigate travel psychologically of course i've always had to deal with being alone sometimes food water and shelter are covered there's other things i have to worry about [Applause] the amazon jungle is a hundred different poisonous creepy crawlies in africa lions buffalo hippos and of course the black mamba the arctic polar bears here in india it's leopards snakes believe it or not honeybees of course the royal bengal tiger yet the thing i've been cautioned about the most were to watch out for the small herds of wild elephants just like the wandering spiritual nomads they call them sadhu i'm here to survive in northern india i'm in the foothills of the himalayas where spiritual wanderers known as sadhus spend their days either walking through or worshiping in the remote parts of this forest some take up residence in an ashram no one knows their names or where they come from and it's no secret that when one goes missing from say a tiger attack no one really knows about it for those with a greater sense of self preservation the ashrams provide safety with spike covered doors and rooftops to protect against elephants and tigers the beauty of the forest here is unquestionable even though over a billion people live close by and many travel these forests to carry out any number of ceremonies of the hindu religion i'll walk in their footsteps past the domain of the leopard sloth bear elephant and of course the royal bengal tiger i'm here to survive in the literal jungle book india [Music] good luck and away they go elephants gone crew's gone now i'm alone let's get off the road for a while walk this riverbed the indian jungle is not a jungle at all it's a temperate forest jungle is actually a hindi word meaning forest one of the many like pajamas bandana or shampoo that we have usurped and thought to be english i'm in is in a forest in the foothills of the himalayan mountains it's a little different than north america you hear you get a lot of trails going through a lot of places that nomads the sadhu has walked and built so you've got tigers and leopards and elephants and everything else all around it but these are small pathways through the forest usually leading to and from temples like this one here this area is listed as a place that has the densest population of tigers and there should be lots of elephants here too so we'll see what happens because building a shelter on the ground is not an option brought with me a package for offering on it for when i come to these temples it's traditional and it's respectful i brought a bag of raisins for that very purpose believe it or not i won't eat them and some herb apparently favorite herb of uh shiva though i don't follow the hindu religion i have no issue with honoring the spirituality of a place whatever that might involve including my offering of gratitude to shiva for my travels in this forest and to request safety believe it or not certain prey animals like deer learn to actually hang out closer to humans because in a way they know that by association it keeps predators away from them of course when i look at it it's more like they're bringing predators closer to me when you know there's tigers and more importantly elephants you really have to be wary of it makes the sounds of all the falling leaves which are falling constantly put you on high alert at some point i'll settle in and i'll relax to the sounds here and i won't be so jumpy at the moment i'm a little jumpy what i have to do is start paying attention to all of the telltale wildlife if i hear a barking deer or spotted deer do a distress call or the monkeys take off and go up into the trees these are all warnings that there's a tiger about basically because the tiger's not going to make any sound at all until he's right there [Music] lots of tracks in the sand here so a lot of it's just wild boar that's an animal i don't particularly want to see out here either is a wild boar you see a bull with the tusks and nasty nasty creatures a really big opening up here [Applause] it's the thing is india is called a jungle but it's really jungle and hindi actually means forest land is more temperate than it is jungle that's for sure look at this classic savannah area oh yeah monkey's jumping from tree to tree back there that's fine right i got home for tonight ranger house all right this will work i saw lots of rat crap the saudis would actually use a place like this unless they were purposely wanting to go without and abstaining they would use a place like this to stay in on their journeys not too many people just stay out on the ground not with tigers about especially man-eaters it was one shot though just like a mile and a half from here just two weeks ago it was a man-eater big bengal tiger so tonight this is gonna feel pretty secure being right here this area is the home territory of a tigress with cubs and this year alone she's already killed 21 people she's eaten the last six kills and i'm right in her front yard this is an abandoned ranger house at one time clean habitable but now left to the monkeys rats spiders and bats i'm putting my fire right in front of the only door in an effort to ward off tigers from coming inside after me without it there's no door and nothing to stop the curiosity of a big cat this is the witching eye this is when things come out i i've already seen massive i think it's called samba deer huge it's like a like an elk he saw me and took off and those are peacocks lots of them spotted deer over there lots of different monkeys so you know the elephants the tigers the leopards they're all up and at it too they're all walking around and this is the action zone i go to get firewood and i'm watching all i keep thinking that all these this edge of the forest here is just this you know there's a tiger laying in weight and i've got to start functioning without that fear running through me the whole time as long as fear is motivating me i'm done it's not it's not going to work i will cinch up and i will not do what i need to do to affect survival so i'm gonna get past that fear hopefully tonight we'll do that do something very large walking across there it doesn't look like it's walking like a deer either i know i sound paranoid but man it's walking like a like a cat i can't get the camera to focus on the creature quick enough as it slinks past a herd of deer and disappears into the forest's edge closer to me it's far too large to be a leopard and didn't move like anything other than a big cat i wish i could have got a look at what was walking across the field there it wasn't moving like a deer it was lower the ground had a nice smooth movement to it it could be my imagination but it easily could have been a cat it's just dark enough that it's like in it yet squint your eyes in the chat is that what i'm seeing the sounds from peacocks and other birds and monkeys are enough of a cacophony to mask the sounds of the real dangers elephants and tigers i can't believe how nervous i feel it's not it's not usual for me not in the wilderness i'm always comfortable too many warnings too many days filled with warnings from people before i got out here gotta get my head around what i have to do to survive here you hear that that right there that's a deer when they do that they're usually warning that there's a tiger that's what that is that's yeah that's a warning but there are there's a tiger [Music] so i i've still got to get my head around just knowing the lay of the land and knowing what i need to do to affect survival first thing i need to do is uh go through my zones of assessment what's on my body what do i have what's close at hand starters neck knife i've used the neck knife a long time this is the ellie algonquin nice sturdy knife but i've also done this thing where i've got some things from me and then some things from locals so i was given this sickle it's like a thick machete i've also actually got this little survival pack here rope there's survival supplies inside compass condition the locals gave me some fine herbs and make tea out of it and they gave me this pot what else have i got here on the modern side for fire starting i'm going to try this fire gel never used it before i know the military uses them i wanted to try it out go with it i've got this cheap little lighter there's hardly any liquid in it if any at all it seems like it's on fumes the other thing they gave me was this mask believe it or not it has a purpose a very important one to wear backwards and walk through the forest if there is a leopard or tiger and they think they're going to get a pounce on you and stalk you they see eyes nose mouth facing them and obviously the thought is that uh it'll stop them from pouncing i'm gonna have to wear this thing all week long so many sounds in the forest big sounds too you know i'm so used to being in places with wolf [Music] so that's it's got to be elephants [Music] here in india i found for myself a decent amount of safety in an abandoned ranger house but i'm hearing noises in the forest behind that have me on edge [Music] john just came up into the tower to see if i can see down the river i can't but i can hear a lot of grunting and snorting i don't think it's elephants i think it's wild boars actually that's what it sounds like okay i don't really want to push my luck and go there to see well i don't know what it is but that's going to remain a mystery i'm saying probably hogs and elephants the good news is when i came back here i found this and these are curry pata hmm right i can eat them that's great right away i've got a salad green well i'm not going farther back because any further i go in now means i don't really have an escape route this is what i mean by um i don't have my sea legs here and usually i do don't have a lot of my old normal wilderness survival senses i have them to rely upon but they're not really just serving me here as well because so much about this place i don't really quite know i mean the dangers could be played up way too much or they can just be stated for what they are 20 foot king cobras wild boars elephants that'll trample you to death leopards and of course you have a present tiger can't relax here too much going on well i'm gonna go walk that riverbed see what's making all the noise back there i think it's probably gone but i'll watch for tracks and sounds i'm pretty sure it was a couple elephants going through i hope they're not just resting and i hope there's no hogs all right i'm torn between making lots of sound are just coming in quietly i think no matter what i'm going to be making lots of sound because the leaves are just walking on corn flakes this is where all the action was now here's a trick that villagers will use if they're going in to gather supplies they'll cough on their on their way into a jungle simple as that lets everything know they're coming and hopefully everything leaves yeah that would scare me away in north america we arm ourselves with bear spray firecrackers shotguns or rifles but here in india they rely on the sound of a cough to ward off curious predators [Music] i actually think i'm on a bit of a trail now nervous or not i need to explore my area to see what's available to me for survival [Music] nice home lucky to have it i'll tell you and there's some food huh it's got to be worldwide i guess [Music] it's yellow wood sorrel indeed it is it's delicious and there's lots of it oh that's really good yellow wood swirl delicious while i'm here i think i see what i can use is to turn into a spear it's likely that during the heat of the day tigers and leopards are sleeping waiting for the cool of dusk to come out on their hunts just the same in an area where i'm not the most lethal predator i prefer to have at least some sort of protection to be honest it's really just largely symbolic this is my defense against a 500 pound tiger this is the area that i don't like so you see all all this greenery here i call it tiger shade because they do love to just lay in there and cool off from the heat of the day but you know if you walk right past them they would be happy to wake up quickly [Music] here's the water hole and that cat that i saw walk across here last night be it leopard or tiger was in between me and the hut so nice to find his tracks just like in any forest a water hole is a gathering place for wildlife it's where they all come it's also a great place though to find wild edibles it doesn't look like i want to drink this though that's pretty sludgy plenty of sheep and goat herders have walked this area along with the wandering sadhus and after a thousand years of forest traveling their evidence is everywhere huh yeah i know what that is okay this is actually it's a fire carrier that's what it is it's done that's been dried and squished together and put the coal in there you can see there's other sort of nomads that have been here i see this this is a that's a big torch i'm not going to take that torch on them whoever it is they might be planning on coming back for it oh first of all let's get a drink of water now i didn't want to really trust coming out here and ingesting water and getting too sick so in this case i did actually bring along a little filter it's a life straw and this can be a lifesaver in a situation like this oh that's good now here's one of those moments where i just got to shape my head i took the time i built a spear and at some point i think i stopped to eat some wood sorrel put the spear down didn't pick back up again now i have no spear [Music] over the many years of survival my body has become used to feasts and famine so a couple of days without food doesn't bother me physically but losing or leaving my personal items behind does seem to always be a result of a lack of nutrition while in the wild it can be hard to concentrate without food in your stomach hmm classic i don't know what they call it here but i call it bull rush that's delicious everything here should be considered in how it can help me survive so if i kind of recap it was walking through my various zones of assessment zone of assessment number one my body what i have on it zone of assessment number two is what's sort of close at hand and in this case it meant this ranger tower that i'm able to take advantage of it's a ready-made shelter that's all it is really is a ready-made shelter it doesn't feed me it doesn't put water in me zone of assessment number three is going much further afield which is what i've accomplished now basically starting at the ranger tower i've gone up into the bush and hiked all the way around to see what i've got available to me and there wasn't much really as a recap i've got wood sorrel curry pata and the bulrush and drinkable water that'll only sustain me for so long i'm in the jungles of india in the heartland of an extremely dangerous female tiger known to have killed 21 people this year alone so it behooves me to carry with me all the protection i can from both the tiger and the wandering packs of elephants which are in the eyes of the locals far more dangerous carrying my fire with me serves two purposes one is that i don't have to try to start a new one if it came on to rain and two is that the smoke helps to ward off predators or ornery elephants and it's the elephant dung itself that i can use to carry the fire here we go but all i really need to do that paste is going to burn that's where i can use the pot that should smolder nicely for actually quite a few hours believe it or not i've used elephant dung before and it works like a charm for this can't get any water out of it for drinking but you can sure use it for fire tinder perfect i've decided to leave behind the ranger house so i can explore survival possibilities in the forest but also hopefully find a better source of drinking water this traveling survival will make me more vulnerable to tiger attack or elephant encounter i've got the elephant dung still smoldering in the kettle behind my back just hanging on the outside hopefully it won't get too hot and burn the pack but so far so good it seems to be working somebody marking their territory be nice if there's some bigger fish i wonder if that little survival kit that was wrapped around the rope was wrapped around has any uh fishing stuff in it i bet it does i'll check that out i mean it's not gonna be able to get minnows with it what i should have done was take taken the mosquito net from the hut i left it there out of you know just consideration now i'm kind of wishing i had it because if i come to deep enough water and enough fish i could net out some fish but i don't have it so hopefully they'll be big enough that i can use this little survival fish kit which i'm pretty sure is this is let's get there's got to be a little fishing line in this little kit i don't know i haven't checked it out but i'm hoping there is especially now that i see fish in the [Applause] water that's great look how beautiful this is i mean it's just stunning here right at the base at the foothills of the himalayan mountains oh there's elephant tracks too that's a big elephant track there we go that is classic got a big elephant track with a tiger track in the middle of it i don't see that very often there's the elephant track there's the tiger track right there that's incredible that sure speaks to the dangers here there have been so many locations i've been on with some strong inherent dangers and most of the time i just got to deal with them you know grizzlies mountain lions black bears that sort of thing and here i'm being shadowed by a couple of men with guns for tigers and i can't see them you know every once in a while i might catch a glimpse eyes way over there they would not allow me to be in this area without an armed guard so i'm out here surviving and there's a couple of armed guards that are shadowing me like little ninja warriors i think here's what i might call home for the night i think elephant dung is my favorite fire carrier it's worked like a charm you know just smoldering in there it doesn't flame up and burn out on me while i'm on the trail and the advantage of using the elephant dung is according to the lore here a fire with elephant tongue in it keeps elephants away so if that's the case i'm down with that so now for some dry fire it shouldn't be too much of a problem actually one of my priorities for camp location is based on how much dry firewood is available struggling to find sticks to burn is a huge disadvantage in the middle of a dark night one habit that i employ always in a survival situation is i do not get the fire going too soon because getting firewood at night is always a a major chore as far as that burning done goes that should be fine there's a bit of firewood i see a really big opening up there and i want to check it out this sort of just falls in line with my checking my zones of assessment if you think about every time you go to somewhere new in a survival situation you kind of should repeat the process of going through your zones of assessment so now stage number one my body and that you know i'm a i'm a few days without feud food uh just just green leaves and feeling a little bit weaker for it um but i'm well hydrated lots of water and i'm slightly more comfortable in the area so that's my zone of assessment number one number two is what i have close at hand well that's the simple stuff got the kettle and now i have smoldering elephant done so that's really good makes it easy for getting a fire going but here's number three sort of further afield i want to come and check out this area because if i'm going to be staying here the night it would be good to know what's here and hopefully nothing too threatening like a royal bengal tiger that's another one of those little mini savannas i don't know not so sure about my choice of location here but i i don't want to get too much farther into the day before i settle down so i'm kind of counting on the fire to do most of the work for me now since there's some elephant gun just over here i'm going to take advantage of it bring it over by the fire keep it smoldering since it's it's said to keep them away that'll work for me that's will do i hope i guess if i'm going to make anything to drink out of this kettle i should rinse it out after having burning elephant dying inside it see if i can fire this into flame now well that was fast fast and easy all right time to make some of that herb tea they gave me they tell me this tea leaf should calm me down um oh that's good actually makes a big difference that's really nice anything i can do to have a sense of familiarity like drinking a hot cup of tea can serve to calm me down in an anxious situation i don't like that i just heard a barking deer off in the distance over that way and he's not barking because of me their warning calls are very clear signs there it is again so wait it out see barking deer only bark for one reason tigers and they let every creature in the area know that a tiger's on the prowl by every creature i mean me okay so there's definitely a tiger crawling around there the warning signs are there i'm just gonna stay close to this fire all night hope it does the trick [Music] i'm in the foothills of the himalayan mountains in northern india in a region known for being the home of one of the densest populations of tigers on the planet many of which are man-eaters there are so many places on this planet you know where you can come and just sleep out under the stars pitch a tent yet there are a handful of areas where you just can't do it you've got to have some sort of armed protection africa of course with the lions the arctic with polar bears here the tigers so it's a delicate balance between all of the humans that walk through here and the tigers unfortunately for the humans every now and then in fact every so often the balance shifts in the favor of the tiger hundreds of people are eaten every year and yet the greatest warning i was given was with regards to elephants it's elephants that have been known to pull people off of sleeping platforms by their legs only to toss them mangled into the indian jungle there's nothing like sitting up all night by a fire worried about tigers to get you to put your life in perspective that's for sure i'm just finding my way through the jungle i say there's a lot of trails it makes things a lot easier that's for sure i don't know what kind of poop that is there's a lot of it and it's big so i really don't want to find out yeah i definitely see an opening in a riverbed up there there we go let's go check this out i can take this for a little while anyway it's not that it's not a dangerous place it's a very active place actually lots of soft sand here so watch for tiger tracks all right let's get up into the shade i'm gonna have to watch burning myself out too much in the sun that's for sure it's just taking my shirt off it's getting getting way too hot stop put the pack down just stop to look and there's a massive tiger track right here look at the size of that i mean that's that's huge it's definitely a tiger track no question about it i just showed you sand reveals what walks through here during the night and hopefully not the day oh boy nice elephant tracks have to see them i never know in a situation like this whether it's a good thing that i'm walking in the wide open right down the middle because it kind of makes all the animals move on or if it's a bad thing because it points me out as a sitting duck any predator in an opportunistic mood and looking for a meal will see a slow moving human in the open as just that an opportunity but more than likely acting as a big noisy and confident human scares everything away more often it's the little creatures that pose the biggest threat [Music] i don't think i'll get it on camera i saw a little viper little tiny guy same color as a stick but poisonous nonetheless there's a riverbed riverbed is the highway of the elephants i just saw a little deer like creature i don't think it was a deer though just one in front of me there a couple of spotted deer still though i wouldn't want to be back here in the dark or in the dusk early dawn too much possibility of the wrong kind of encounter i'm always a bit nervous about breaking open old nests and stirring up a new hornet nest or a sleeping viper shoot i was hoping it was a fresh termite nest but it's old a lot of these are just too old i'm trying to find one that's fresh so i can munch out on some termites there's just nowhere near as many as i thought there was going to be and if i do it like a monkey stick hook it all the way down let them climb onto it there we go just needs a little twig like this that's huge that's a huge tiger track why is he walking the way i want to go i mean you know you that's the thing about i've always said the thing i've always said about spotting animals up ahead is when you see an animal you know it's an animal if he's like is that i can't tell is it isn't it well then usually it's not it's probably a stump or a rock sure enough there's a bit of a stump up in the water here it caused my heart to jump for a second and then i was like i wasn't sure and it's just because i wasn't sure almost 100 of the time it won't be an animal it's a stump see all this noise that's going on here right now is probably because of me when i'm sitting still and things start to happen that's when maybe something else is prowling around a big part of how i need to be when i'm out here is is walking with purpose projecting a real confidence level in other words not looking like prey holy [Music] so what happened i went to go tell you about a plant that i saw and uh stepped on a bee's nest now i got my nerves up holy mack that was a wake-up call i figure i can outrun an elephant and maybe outstealth a tiger but when it comes to hornets wasps and bees there's nowhere to run and nowhere to hide all right i i know this just sounds like but i just heard a tiger i heard and it was absolutely a tiger not a monkey not a hog not an elephant that was a it's tiger in this distance here [Applause] that's not a tiger that's monkeys but they're up in the trees and sometimes that means that's not a good sign actually that's actually a warning there's a tree here that i ca i can get on oh my goodness it's surrounded by stinging nettle though wow i can whack that stuff down with my walking stick [Applause] huh i think i see tiger scratchings on the tree i bet you that's exactly what those are i need to get higher up damn stinging nettle oh right on the other side of this street oh that's going to burn for a while yeah things first come down well maybe tigers don't like stinging nettle that would be a bonus damn i didn't really want to come up here this early i figured i'd stay down below take that elephant dung and get a little fire going use the fire's protection but i heard a roar i got warnings from monkeys and i am surrounded by what i like to call tiger shade all of this low green shrubbery that tigers can slink through if something came after me in a mad scramble i can go higher really tricky to get up there now and i could not take the camera with me i'd have to just drop the camera to the ground i'm okay for tonight if i have to i'll just sit here all night if i have to that's pretty much what's going to happen i'm quite certain of it with my adrenaline rushing in my voice i have no choice but to wait out the night 12 feet off the ground and a tree i didn't even have time to set up a second camera to point up at me if i gotta sit through the night might as well sit in a tree okay i s first comes tiger and comes elephant then comes lester running very fast i've got some rope on me time to make use of it now tie it to the tiger stick i'm just going to use a simple clove hitch it always works when you've got to get something tied around a pole locks it in nice and tight do it right it won't come out hopefully i did it right now i can lower it down and bring it back up if i need to i also tied the camera so i could lower it and raise it and keep my hands free well that worked now the camera's tied to my waist i can let go and i wasn't thinking about how to get set for the night when i decided to jump up on this tree that's what's all around me here anyway i'm doing that trick of mine where i just look around and kind of memorize everything because once it gets dark you get creeped out but it's like you know what it's exactly the same forest with the exception of the aforementioned potential visitors sometimes i wonder how i get myself into these situations i don't know what that is i'll just turn the gain up on the camera so you can still see me but it's getting the camera is now seeing something a lot brighter than i can it's darker for me there's a lot more sounds in this forest at night than there is during the day during the day it's just it's just leaves falling off the trees at night adds all kinds of wonderful creatures good news is they let you know when something big's coming around when i first got here no question about it well i heard the growl anyway within 15 minutes of the growl must have moved around a bit nah then the monkeys started up then deer started up then the deer stopped the monkey stopped and i was in the meantime i was walking away at the stinging nettle might be wishful thinking but i would believe that probably the sound that i was making um scared it away if there was ever a time for me to make the statement this is gonna be a long night it's now physical survival means obtaining food water and shelter intellectually survival means assessing and utilizing information but in the emotional sense survival means getting a grip on myself and allowing my intellect and physicality to win out the day i have to shed fears both real and imagined so i can pass the responsibility of survival back to the mind and body in life it's best to let the heart rule but in pure bush survival sometimes you have to ask the fearful heart to acquiesce to the mind and body but how do i do that with a 500 pound royal bengal tiger looking for a meal only yards away

Channel: Survivorman - Les Stroud

Views: 292,691

Rating: 4.8847008 out of 5

Keywords: Survivorman TV Series, Les Stroud, Survivorman, Survivorman Les Stroud, Survivorman TV Show, Survivorman TV, India, survive, survival, Leopards, snakes, territorial honey bees, Royal Bengal tiger, wild elephants, predators, ancient jungle temples, jungle, jungle temples, willpower, endurance

Id: 8676GnNIWWo

Length: 48min 5sec (2885 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021