Tontan Travel - Wildlife Tours

Tontan Travel ( https://tontantravel.com ) runs wildlife tours in Khao Yai national park and other n A personalized trip that you will never forget.

We, Tontan Travel, run wildlife tours in Khao Yai national park and other nature reserves in Thailand. One of our most popular destinations is Khao Yai national park, arguably the best spot to see Thailand's magnificent wildlife ranging from gibbons to elephants, pythons to flying lizards, and trogons to hornbills. The videos & pics posted on our page show the diversity of wildlife and it

proves you are able to see these in the wild. For some you might need more luck than for others, but it is certainly worth to visit. The primary goal of our tours in the national parks is wildlife watching, but as a 'bonus' this activity takes place in jungles full of giant trees, waterfalls and wonderful vistas. Unlike most of the other tours on offer by other companies, we specialize in private, tailor-made trips of multiple days. Take a look at our webpage, https://tontantravel.com, to find more info on our tours. Read the reviews of our previous guests. If you decide to go on tour with us, we will do our best to make sure you will be just as happy as these reviewers!

28/12/2025

In recent years leopard sightings have increased in Kaeng Krachan national park. If you walk into the park restaurant and talk with other visitors, guides or rangers over lunch, you will likely hear stories about recent leopard sightings. Sometimes even sightings from that very same day! It's exciting to hear these stories first-hand. It proves that it is really possible to see one. But after spending several days in the park you may start to feel a little impatient. "When is it my turn to see one?"
You soon realise that it isn't that easy at all. As with most wildlife, it usually comes down to being at the right spot at the right time. And even though there are peak activity hours and hotspots where they are seen more frequently than elsewhere, still you never know where and when exactly one will appear.

Well, today, it was our turn again.
And it was literally a matter of a second. Had we started our drive down as little as a couple of seconds earlier then we would have definitely missed this sighting, because it would have been a bit further down the slope and there it would not have been visible from the car.

Whilst driving down the road from Panoen Thung camp to Ban Krang camp in the late afternoon, we peared out of the window and from a forested slope right next to the car, this black leopard appeared. He was heading for the road, but was stopped in his tracks because we happened to drive right in front of him. He stopped. And so did we, a bit further down the road. But it soon made a u-turn and disappeared back down the forested slope.

However, we backed up the car a bit and decided to wait for a while.
And sure enough after a short while we noticed movement in the undergrowth. Camera ready... and... shoot!
We got several shots as it walked out onto the dirt track and calmly walked down the road until it was no longer visible around the curve.

We decided to keep some distance but then continued driving.
But it must have walked back into the forest. Because when we turned around the corner it was nowhere to be seen. We waited for quite a bit of time, but it never reappeared.
A short, but mesmerizing experience.

Not the highest quality photo, but we won't complain.

25/09/2025

Today, a team of h**petologists including some friends of ours published the official first records of the Zoos Victoria’s Wolf Snake, Lycodon zoosvictoriae, as well as the very rare Ocellated Brown Snake, Xenelaphis ellipsifer from Thailand.
Congratulations to the whole team with this new publication.
Please read: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395810185_First_country_records_of_the_rarely_observed_snakes_Lycodon_zoosvictoriae_Neang_Hartmann_Hun_Souter_Et_Furey_2014_AND_Xenelaphis_ellipsifer_Boulenger_1900_Serpentes_Colubridae_from_Thailand_with_notes

We have yet to see the Xenelaphis ellipsifer ourselves. But we're amongst a very small group of h**p enthusiasts who have been fortunate to see the Lycodon zoosvictoriae.
In July 2024, together with Harry, Ian and Summer, we went on an expedition in Eastern Thailand to try and find this little-known Lycodon zoosvictoriae which at that point was officially only known from Cambodia. However, a couple records had appeared on social media platforms that proved their presence in Thailand.
With the knowledge that the species prefers high elevation forests, we were in for a tough trek. After way too many months of sitting behind a desk, my fitness was extremely poor which made the hike with a heavy backpack filled with camping and cooking gear and a week's worth of food very tough. But we reached the habitat we had selected where we were expecting this little-known wolf snake species to occur.
And sure enough Ian proved us right when on the third night he found an adult of this species that very few people in the world have ever seen.
We made a few other great finds over the course of our stay. And on one of the final nights after hiking all the way up to the highest mountain peak, Harry spotted another juvenile on our descent, clinging to the side of a large tree.
What a great success!

The attached images show the adult Lycodon zoosvictoriae.
A very different looking snake from all other Thai wolf snake species.
I believe this also gives us the bragging rights that we are probably the only ones who have seen all 15 currently known wolf snakes species in Thailand ;) .

12/05/2025

We're a little late to the party, but a couple of weeks ago, friends of ours described a new viper species. Congratulations to the whole team for adding yet another new viper to the fauna of Thailand! I believe that brings the total number of vipers in Thailand to 28 species.

It had been quite a few years since we first saw this species.
Just a couple of months after the start of the covid pandemic in 2020, our friends Alex Mason and Darryl Sweetland found an unusual-looking, little viper (the individual in the first image in this post) on a limestone massif in Phitsanulok province, northern Thailand. This got the adrenaline in our blood pumping, especially after having been locked down at home for several months due to the closure of all national parks in Thailand. At that point it seemed the covid pandemic had been contained fairly well within Thailand, so travel within the country was possible again, with some restrictions. The national parks were still close at that point, so all our tours had been cancelled and we were enjoying the surprising but rather welcome break after years of running a business 24/7.

Together with Rushen Jaihan we jumped in the car shortly after seeing their image of the stunning, heavily banded juvenile viper. And drove the 7:30 hrs to Phitsanulok to join them in the search for more specimens.
We spotted a beautiful turquoise-coloured male that had taken a quite unusual position on a vertical tree trunk (in situ photo can be found in this post). And we found a bunch of other specimens, mostly tiny juveniles. But even though all of them were bearing some unusual black crossbar markings on their body, none of them matched the extreme banded look of that very first specimen that Alex and Darryl had found and had gotten us so excited in the first place.
Their appearance was very similar to the Large-eyed Pit Viper (Trimeresurus macrops) which is common in for example Bangkok and Khao Yai. Albeit with some more distinctive markings. If they hadn't found that very first unusual looking specimen, but rather one of the other more standard-looking individuals, we probably wouldn't have jumped in the car right away, haha. But in hindsight, we're still glad we took that journey to a region we had barely explored.
The authors of the paper on this new species have also chosen for the fitting name, the Cryptic Green Pit Viper, Trimeresurus cryptographicus.

For those interested to read more about the new species, here follows the link to the original paper in which it is described.
https://mapress.com/zt/article/view/zootaxa.5621.5.2

29/03/2025

A note about the earthquake that originated in Myanmar and also caused some serious damage in Bangkok, 1000kms or so from the epicentre. First of all, our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected by the earthquake. All our staff and their families are fine. One of our guides was in a skyscraper in Bangkok when the earthquake happened. He had the fear of his life when the tall building started swaying and cracking. Fortunately he left the building safely. The building is still standing, but until the structure has been inspected he is not able to get back to his apartment and car that is parked inside the building. Most of our guides live far from the affected areas.

Bangkok is built in a river delta on relatively soft soil which is the reason why the effects were so serious in Bangkok, despite its long distance from the epicenter. Most of Thailand seems to be unaffected. The news from Myanmar is slowly coming in. The number of fatalities there is still increasing.

The majority of our tours continue as usual. Only 2 groups that the above mentioned guide was supposed to be guiding in Kaeng Krachan national park in the next couple days have been affected, but we have already been in touch with the guests. And are trying to find solutions/alternatives.

If you have any questions regarding your booking, feel free to send us an email.

24/06/2024

A dolomite mining concession has been applied for right on the border of Kaeng Krachan national park, please read the shared post for more details.

Edit: It did not share the actual explanation by Baanmaka Naturelodge, so we will paste their post here:

As some of you may already know, an application for a dolomite mining concession has been applied for in Kaeng Krachan subdistrict. The proposed location is just 1.2km from the boundary of Kaeng Krachan NP (and Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site).
The area is behind the hill to the right of the lake as you look out from the jetty at Baan Maka (about 500m from the lodge at it's nearest point). The habitat comprises dry dipterocarp forest with limestone outcrops. It is currently undeveloped and still supports many animal and plant species including the highly protected Serow. The forest is contiguous with the park.
A local community group, Rak Nong Maka, has been set up to co-ordinate opposition to the mine. They are talking to conservation groups, local politicians, the media, etc.
It is already about nine months since the application was made and the application process is expected to take about two years.
The various actions the community group are taking such as erecting signs, holding meetings, trips to Bangkok, etc all cost money and their limited funds are running low. If you would like to contribute to the fund then please do so using the bank details in the shared posting below. Just a few hundred Baht will go a long way.
If you think you can help in any other way, i.e. have experience of a similar endeavour in Thailand then please get in contact with the community group directly.
A bio blitz will be organised for a coming weekend too, in order to populate iNaturalist with photographic evidence and to strengthen the group's position. More on this to come.
Thanks for your time.

19/06/2024

Our guide Mong Korakoch and 2 lucky guests had a very close-up encounter with a black leopard today in Kaeng Krachan national park. The majestic cat walked just right by our car!
How bold is that!?

What an amazing sighting!
https://tontantravel.com/en/tours/kaeng-krachan-tours

27/04/2024

The list of snakes of Thailand keeps expanding. Yet another new species has been described from Thailand.
This time a kukri snake. This new species is named the Cave Kukri Snake, Oligodon speleoserpens. It has been described from limestone mountains in Trang/ Satun. This individual I found foraging late at night in a small crevice in a vertical rock wall. A plain looking snake, but a special find. This particular group of kukris from the "cinereus"-complex are notoriously difficult to find. It's for that reason that to this day new species are being described. And we have very good reasons to believe this is not the last one...
Congratulations to all authors involved. Great to see again that many friends of ours were part of this process of describing this new species.

The paper can be found here:
https://vertebrate-zoology.arphahub.com/article/112132/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR1MjhFTBcCcYzyaWDswEpZw1QvlOmT9wjMtyYD9jbEkf3f4FL18GrkQxHQ_aem_AR8qjlcQEHPWs8xbmPZYmHVSb-LrB9zsXwlsYAxkdvrYaVMbMpmazBCzYVVxfKWoGqJP2BsXS9ZUDbgggfXMmRQl

05/04/2024

The new pit viper species are being described faster than we are able to post on our FB page. Again, largely the same team of h**petologists including some close friends of us are furthering science. Congratulations to all!
Maybe next time we will post some pics of the new Kra Isthmus Pit Viper that was described only 8 days ago, but today it's time for something else.

This particular one we couldn't miss, because so many of our guests have seen these on our tours in Kaeng Krachan national park ( https://tontantravel.com/en/tours/kaeng-krachan-tours ). For many years we have referred to them as Trimeresurus cf. popeiorum. The abbreviation "cf." in taxonomy refers in this case to an individual that seems to compare to a known species, but there's some reasonable doubt that it could possibly be a taxa on its own. This may not be 100% the definition but I think it's close enough.
We knew the Kaeng Krachan (and beyond) population didn't quite match with the true Pope's Pit Viper (T. popeiorum) that originally comes from India. One obvious difference is that most of the time those Indian snakes seem to lack the red postocular stripe that is such a striking feature of the males in Kaeng Krachan.
And finally it has a name, the Tenasserim Pit Viper, Trimeresurus tenasserimensis.

Another similar, closely-related pit viper species known from northern Thailand has also been newly described in the same publication. It's called the Lanna Pit Viper, Trimeresurus lanna. Good luck telling those two apart ;) Fortunately the ranges of each species are pretty well established.

But for now we will only just post a series of images of the new Tenasserim Pit Viper. Although nameless up until now, you've always been part of our family! 😍

And the paper:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379568812_An_integrative_taxonomic_revision_of_the_Trimeresurus_popeiorum_group_of_pitvipers_Reptilia_Serpentes_Viperidae_with_descriptions_of_two_new_species_from_the_Indo-Burma_Biodiversity_Hotspot?fbclid=IwAR2T7OqooBR0QApSU-WTQYMs0Kx5CfCdfbxEB3PF1YMm3cDNjsgp8JytPhg_aem_AV4NMkE22_D1hk_KWagH1fXG_VY12vL1Cqzs4ZMgn1ieMCpDpbhG2wR6H5PS-FALMtDM88XVl_haqAQrNnWcM2ma

07/02/2024

When exploring the Thai jungles at night, you will often see tiny mice running at high speed through the canopy. It's amazing how fast they move around in complete darkness.
Usually, these are Pencil-tailed Tree Mice (Chiropodomys gliroides). They're common, but getting a good close-up view, is not common at all.

However, on a trip last December, we had a lovely encounter. We were photographing a Spiny Turtle (Heosemys spinosa), when we spotted this little cutie sitting still on a leaf at eye level, seemingly unbothered by our presence. With our macro photo gear setup for shooting the turtle, we were able to take a couple shots of the tiny fur ball.

Too cute not to share.
https://tontantravel.com/

30/01/2024

A warm welcome to yet another new snake species from Thailand. A highly venomous krait species called, Bungarus sagittatus.

A big congratulations to the authors of the paper.

We may have overlooked it, but to our knowledge the authors haven't suggested an English common name for this new species. So, you have to make up your own English name ;)

It's described from Ratchaburi province. But we have also found this species in Kaeng Krachan national park, Thailand, where these images were taken.

The scientific name "sagittatus" means "arrow" and refers to the dark arrow markings on the subcaudals (scales under the tail).

The paper can be downloaded at:
https://zse.pensoft.net/article/116601/?fbclid=IwAR303mtXmGREoPWD-WKt6qSeEo3p363BnyAXdX7gdD1FDZbNvPkVcRc1nwc

Click on the black button "pdf" on the top right (on desktop).

https://tontantravel.com/

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