You are good luck

---

“Please note that while the above mammals are found in the Bandhavgarh National Park, their sightings are a matter of chance. We have had guests that have seen most of the mammals, while others have seen fewer. Please do not have very high expectations. With high expectations come bigger disappointments, so do spend time taking in the sights and sounds of nature and enjoy the forest in its totality.”
That is what was written in the booklet that was given to me when I arrived at the hotel. So I thought “fair enough, I will enjoy the ride.” I was woken up at 5am (I thought this was a vacation) in order to be ready to leave by 5:45. The reserve opens at 6:30 but you have to get a number that determines which route your jeep will take to the central meeting spot where the elephants are waiting to take us further into the jungle. It’s first come first serve; we all know what that means. Ok, I will tell you I was not prepared for how cold it gets here in the morning. It’s VERY cold, add the wind chill from riding in an open jeep, and you end up freezing your butt off. About an hour after the sun rise the air begins to warm, but I think that I finally began feeling warm an hour before our tour was done. Oh! Each tour is about 4 hours long.

Enough complaining!

Normally what happens is once you receive your route designation and the reserve opens the jeeps drive quickly (but within reason) to where the elephant meeting point is so that you can get an elephant since there is a limited amount. So we don’t really stop along the way unless we see a tiger. There’s no “let’s wait around here and hope a tiger shows up.” This is serious business.

Just before we reach the central meeting spot we hear the Sambar Deer sound an alert. Now there’s a couple of variety of deer in the reserve which will send out many alerts for different reasons, but the Sambar will only sound an alert if a tiger is present because the tiger is the only predator that can take down a Sambar deer. They are huge! So our jeeps slows down and our guide, driver, and naturalist (we’re covered here!) start listening for the location of the Sambar, quickly back up our jeep taking us down another path to where we find not one but 2 male tigers! Our naturalist tells us that they are about a year and a half old, that’s why they were in the same area together. But they were nearly full grown. WOW! I was so excited, actually everyone was. We watched as the first tiger looked at us, walked parallel to us and then walked right across the path just about 6 feet from the rear of our jeep and headed into the brush. It was his brother’s turn to make an entrance and he did the same thing following the same path the other one took. They eventually met up in the brush and began playing; unfortunately the pictures of the two tigers playing didn’t come out. Oh well, I am happy with the pics I did get.

Once the tigers went out of view we drove off to the meeting point for our elephant ride. There was only one problem, there were no elephants today. Not because we were too late, just because the elephants could not get to where some of the tigers had been located. That’s ok. I got to see 2 tigers! So I was very happy. The naturalist that was with us said that we were good luck, I like that. Oh I forgot to mention that there was another person riding with me on the tour. He was a naturalist here about 10 years ago, has done a couple of documentaries, and has recently published a coffee table book on tigers. Not bad company. Although I do have to admit that with all these nature experts I feel just a bit intimidated. The conversation around the dinner table is all about the various reserves that they have visited, and the various projects that they have worked on. It’s kind of like shop talk. The upside is I have found that if you want to see Leopards then you need to go to a reserve down near Mumbai, and to see Asian elephants you need to go to northern India in the UK state (where I was). Which is pretty good info.

Sorry there's so few pics...that's because I'm on a limited amount of internet time and it's very slow. I will post more when I'mback in Delhi.

---

Comments

[M]

Totally sweet pictures! I am glad you got to experience this. Makes the whole study thing worth it now!!!

[TC]

LOL
Did we forget to mention you have to get up really early to see some animals? ;) When we were in Africa we usually got up before sunrise so we could catch some nocturnal animals before they go to sleep. It didn't always work, but sometimes you get lucky. Sounds like you got lucky! Those are some great pictures of tigers. I can't wait to see the rest!

[Jen]

So, I'm sitting here in Wisconsin, buried under 6 inches of snow from last night, some of the local schools are even closed, wondering--how cold is cold??? The morning temp where you are would probably be a heat wave for me!!! ha ha ha Awesome Tiger photos--please tell me though that you have a huge zoom lens on your camera, or were you really that close to a living, breathing, wild tiger???