Chakra, the elusive queen of Bandhavgar.

Leaving Hyderabad proved to be much more difficult than arriving. We had been waitlisted on the Jabalpur train for a month, and promised that within a month, the confirmation would be issued. On the day of departure, nothing happened. No confirmation was forthcoming. The problem was that this train only operated twice a week between Hyderabad and Patna. A sort of cross country intercity express, that stopped at the heartland stations of India, ending in Bihar. None of its stations were linked with Hyderabad by air, and not of the cities were particularly large. This train was the fastest, most convenient link between them all. Most important of all, the train linked the Indian Army Ordinance corps Headquarters with the Indian Army Ordinance corps factories and main base in Jabalpur. Soldiers like trains and so this one was fully booked months in advance. As sunset came, we started to look at alternatives. Flying to Jabalpur could only be done via Delhi, with a long day and night wait. It also cost Rs 13,000 for two people as opposed to Rs 1500. At last, two hours before departure, Mr Rashid, my rail ticket organiser and general Hyderabad contact came up to me and told me that the berths had been confirmed.
“There has been a train derailment” He said.
“How does that affect me?”
“So many trains are cancelled, and 22 people are waitlisted on A/C class and 32 waitlisted on Sleeper class. So the Director of railways has given an order that an extra bogie be attached to clear the waiting list.”

An extra bogie meant a whole carriage. We were on. I had given up hope of going and so packed frantically, jumped in a car and headed to Secunderabad station. Secunderabad is the biggest, most modern station in greater Hyderabad. It is only over a hundred years old. Originally the broad gauge link from the British cantonment to the British Port of Bombay. The station was a large domed affair, and while not totally Islamic in nature, it was certainly not a replica of the British Railway Stations of Trivandrum or Bombay. We pushed our way through the crowds, watched our pockets and boarded the train. No 7091 up. The air conditioned cabin was quiet compares to the maelstrom outside. The train pulled out a few minutes late, and the conductor came to check our tickets.
“Train is one hour late at Jabalpur” He said.
“How come?” I asked
“There has been de-railment and this train has been re routed.”

It was ten thirty at night and we settled down to sleep. This was to be our longest train journey in India at just over 18 hours. This journey too, travelled the most kilometres. Above me was a jolly, well educated railway engineer, and opposite me was an affable young construction engineer. I woke at nine in the morning feeling guilty, surely the chap upstairs would want to sit with me? I looked up and the engineer was sleeping. I looked over and the other engineer was sleeping. I woke up, washed my face and went to the door to look at India rolling by. Low brown hills, with the occasional brown village, with the even more occasional splash of green crept into view. Brown was certainly the colour of India in the spring. The 7091 up rattled across wide dry brown river beds and around the brown hills. Every eight hours or so, it would arrive somewhere large (and brown) and stop while the engines were changed or watered. At around midday, the railway engineer appeared at the platform. We both bought coffees from the a vendour and took in the bustle of an Indian train station without the encumbrance of having to go anywhere. All we needed to do was get back on the train.

We watched as the two American designed diesel locomotives were unhitched and a single electric replaced it.
“Six thousand horsepower between them” He said to me.
“and the electric”
“Only five thousand, but single.”
“We are running eight hours behind schedule” he remarked.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Because we were supposed to be here eight hours ago”
“But we never stopped moving?”
”We have been heavily re routed”

With a massive toot of its massive horn, the 7091 up made its intentions to depart clear. A minute or two after the toot, the door infront of us seemed to move. Was this an illusion? Within a few seconds, we could both confirm that the door had indeed moved six feet to the left. The train was departing. We threw our old coffee cups into the bin and hopped aboard. We looked out of the door as the last few passengers in the general coaches ran to get on. They sprinted up the train and up to the door. They could not get in because there was a mass of humanity hanging on to the bars by the opening of the doors. Eventually some accommodation was made and the hanging standees allowed more hanging standees. I was curious as to what would happen, and so when I judged that the train was going sixty miles an hour. I looked out of the door and peered forward towards the engine. All the men were gone. They had either moved in, or off.

The train wound on through the night, and eventually arrived at Jabalpur at eleven pm. We grabbed an auto rickshaw to the hotel, booked our car for the next day and slept.

Upon waking, we had breakfast, sent a few emails and caught our cab to Bandhavgar National Park. This 120 mile drive turned out to take five hours, crossing India’s brown central heartlands. The only differences between this and the train was the fact that we could read the shop signs, and that it was uncomfortable.

Here, every sign was in Hindi. Every person spoke Hindi. No one spoke any other language. After all, why should they? These villagers, rich and poor, spoke what they believed was the central and only language of any worth in India, indeed perhaps the world. Villages of the same size, with poorer inbitants, in the central south or south, all spoke some English and some Hindi as well as their own language. This was a glowing example of Hindi de-educating the Indian people. Even ten years ago, these people would have had a smattering of English, and all officials would have spoken it with a degree of ability. Now this had all changed.

After five bumpy hours, we arrived at the Tiger Trails camp. A simple affair with reasonable prices.


Conservation in India

Bandhavgar National Park is situated near the town of Umaria in the state of Madya Pradesh. This is about 18 hours north of Hyderabad, and eighteen hours south of Delhi. While it looks like it is at the geographical centre of a map of India, it is in fact at the heart of North India. The people are largely rural, poor and uneducated. The cities are part of the Hindi Heartland. This part of India is the reason why programs like National Geographic and Discovery Channel are dubbed into Hindi.

India has always had a battle with conservation. It could easily be argued that concrete has won over animals and the environment, but there are some encouraging signs. The wildlife act is very strong. India banned all forms of hunting decades ago. It is, to the best of my knowledge, illegal to kill another living thing, Indeed some animals are better protected than humans! There is poaching, but with the notable exceptions of the rangers killing the tigers in one of the parks, the effect is negligible. The most powerful weapon in the Indian conservation scene are the people who work for it. The good wildlife officers, the WWF workers, the honest government officers, the activists, and the educated people who back up and finance these people. Unlike Africa, there are so many Indians who are desperate preserve the once prolific wildlife of their nation.

The problem with India and conservation is development and enforcement and corruption. The physical and financial development of the nation has become a priority. Land is used to make way for housing colonies, Dubai style blocks of flats, Cyber Cities, airports factories and, in the Himalayas, Army Camps. There are many reasons for this development, the first is the growth of the private sector, who no doubt “facilitate” guarantees over conservation concerns, the second is financial success, India is doing well, and like any nation, they want to build these economy boosters. Thirdly, the government wants to show largesse, and get more votes; More houses, more jobs, more cyberparks mean more votes. Keeping tiger or deer numbers stable does not.

Added to this, there is a gap in understanding between the people and the flora and fauna of India. The uneducated and poor villagers do not see a problem with cutting down a tree. They want the firewood, and have no concept of there not being a tree there tomorrow. Many villagers also keep cows and use the dung for fuel and the milk if possible. They keep the cows in open areas, and do not feed them. The cows then eat everything that they can find and their hoofs close up the ground, disallowing it from growing anything again. If one were to suggest keeping the cows in compounds and feeding them, the villagers would ask where the money would come from for such an exercise. The long rolling brown hills of India are not historic. Where there used to be forests and jungles everywhere, the villager and the cow have created the bare brown hill. The answer is to cull the excess cows, find an alternative fuel for the peasant citizens and to give them a means of keeping the cows required fed and in a compound. Cows are semi sacred to the Hindus of India, and so culling is out of the question. “Sterilisation is the answer” said an intelligent Hindu ecologist. But for this, there needs to be a major impetus and cash injection from central government. The villager however is not the only culprit in this. On this trip alone, we regularly saw educated middle class Indians feeding animals, throwing plastic bags out of the windows of their car and driving recklessly; all within the national parks. For them, the tigers are something to tick off their list of “have seens” and perhaps a source of National Pride. Worst of all, when the villagers are seen committing a crime under the wildlife act, India’s middle class tend to ignore them. Our guide, an ecologist was taking us for a bird walk when we came across some people cutting a very large tree, one hundred metres from the fence of Badhavgar National park.

“Is this allowed? Is this legal?” I asked
“No actually, this is totally illegal”
“Could you not call on them to stop? To tell them that this is wrong?”
“they are villagers. They always do this” he smiled at me.
“Perhaps you should call a forest ranger, or lodge and F.I.R.”
“Yes if the forest service comes, then they will stop them”
“Well why not call them, they are very close by”
“No, what to do, they are just villagers” The guide refused to act, I did not push him, and agreed that education is more important than arrest. But I got the distinct impression that he thought there were “Indian Citizens”, and then there were “insignificant villagers”

By and large, therefore, the casual tourist who makes even a short journey in India might be forgiven for thinking that there is no conservation effort in the country.

There are, however, some success stories, some ongoing projects, and many people who are trying. In my opinion, the rebroadcasting of the natural history and nature programmes in the local language is a major step forward. Ten years ago, Turks would ask me where I worked. “Tanzania” I would say, “Ah, the island south of Australia” they would remark. Now, when I say Tanzania, even the poorest Turks now say “yes-the Serengeti, the Ngorongoro crater- I have seen those giraffes on the discovery channel”. All of this has come about because of the rebroadcast of Discovery in Turkish. Indians have long known where Africa is, but on tv, they see the income that tourism brings to Africa. Then they see programs about India’s wildlife on the same channel. The Ganges fresh water dolphins, the tigers of the centre and east, the snow leopards of Kashmir. Indians see their country compared with others and feel a sense of pride. Apart from the projects, in a country of over one billion people, it is not hard to find a serious minority of totally committed ecologists, and concerned citizens. People who do their best to educate everyone that they meet, regardless of educational level.


And so, with these experiences in mind, we arrived at the gate of Bandhavgar National Park at six O clock in the morning. We joined a line of long wheel based Suzuki jeeps, called the “Gypsy” in India. As we sat in the subzero temperatures, our driver and guide went off to sign in, and collect a guide. We were also given a route card. The MP forest department run a system in the park. Only 45 light vehicles are allowed into the Park per day. Every vehicle is allocated a card from A-D. This told our driver on which route to drive. While some of the drivers were very professional, a few were cowboys from the village. As soon as it turned 0630, the gates were swung open and the jeeps set off like something from the whacky races. A is regarded as being the best drive, and so if the jeep is not on A, the drivers tended to race around their circuit, report in to the forest department check point at the centre of the park, confer, and then head to where who had seen the tiger. This often resulted in 20 cars trying to look at one tiger 200m away. The drivers, in search of tips, would act like madmen, trying to get a better look at the tiger for their clients. On the day that we arrived one English girl was thrown out of her gypsy while manoeuvring, and the day before two crashed into each other doing the same thing.

As soon as we saw, what was going on, I put a stop to this for our car.
“Balu” I told our driver in no uncertain terms, “If you get D, then drive it slowly. I want to see India, not the North Indian 4x4 rally”. Balu was a good driver, who thought we were mad, but he did as he was told.

On our first day, we unknowingly suffered the rally, and saw a lone tiger from the distance, and twenty gypsies and two Tata 4x4’s. We told Balu to take us somewhere else, and he did so. The landscape was a mixture of forest, small sections of flatland and an enormous knob that rose eight hundred metres off the forest floor and once housed the local ruler. In the afternoon we drove at a very sedate pace with no route card and again saw a tiger from the distance, but by now, I had got the idea behind the system and realised what I wanted.

The next morning, we paraded pre dawn again with all the gypsies and drew C. Our new driver and our rather strangely named guide “Kaptan Singh”. Were forlorn. The forest ranger escort given to us was not too pleased either.
“Drive it slowly” I said, not knowing that C was their least favourite drive and the longest. We spluttered into the park and all the other C cars gunned their engines behind us.
“Pull over, let them go” we said. Our driver did as he was told and five cars sped past us. We then drove very slowly around our circuit. Every now and then, the car would stop and switch its engine off for some minutes while we observed or photographed Sambar, white spotted deer, or one of the two hundred species of bird that abound in Bandhavgar. At each halt the escorting forest officer and Kaptan Singh would listen for any untoward sounds. One hour in, the both went very cold.
“Listen- alarm call of white spotted deer-now another, from there” we sat with heightened anticipation.
“This is very unusual, no tigers are known to be in this territory” said the forest officer.
“Again- more calls” and with that we heard the low rumble of a tiger’s growl. We sat in our tiny gypsy, on a deserted track and waited, literally with baited breath. The alarm calls, a short high shriek “UoooooK” continued liberally, until we saw a young tiger appear out of the forest to our right. It was sneaking slowly forward. The white spotted deer stood stupidly in front of us in a group. Then, to the amazement of guide, escort and driver, a second tiger head emerged from the bush. The two large adolescents or young adults were stalking the white spotted deer. At one point I snapped a tiger and a deer facing the same way. This was madness why did the deer sit there. After a wait that seemed very long, the tigers continued pacing towards the deer. Finally they both charged forwards in a long loping gait. The deer panicked, and hopped and flitted across the clearing in front of us and crossed the road. On came the tigers, not too fast, but with determination. The alarm calls shrieked as the deer made their getaway. The tigers stopped their charge and wandered into the forest. The deer came back and carried on munching the trees. We listened to the further alarm calls of other animals and tracked them in the gypsy. We could not enter the forest, and could only go on the sandy paths, but we headed to where the tigers should appear. After another twenty minutes of waiting, they did not do so, and our escorting officer felt the need to check in. And so we puttered along to the centre point to have our cards marked and have a light breakfast. Kaptan Singh looked at us strangely.

“So many cars must have driven past them, if you had not told us to go slowly, we would have missed all of that too. We saw what no other tourist saw, with no other cars” He smiled wanly.

“so what would you like to see now…?”

Our days in Bandhavgar continued in this vein, avoiding other cars wherever possible and taking in all of India’s wildlife, not just the very hard to find tigers. While back at the hotel we watched a film about Simon King and Alphonse Roy, two eminent wildlife cameramen who made a film, trying to capture a tiger kill. They focused on Chakra, a 12 year old female. Alphonse finally captured the kill, but for me, the most dramatic footage was that of Chakra surprising and fighting a sloth bear. I longed to catch a glimpse of Chakra, not necessarily to photograph her, but see this one regal female in her own domain. Balu was back with us now, and on our last day I asked if we could hang around the field where Chakra has her territory.

“She is not here now” Said Kaptan.
“She is elsewhere” said our new escorting officer.
“I want to keep moving on our last day” Said Cisca. And so I was over ruled.
“Ok, just sunset at the field” I conceded.

We drove to the temple of Shiva, saw herds of deer, birds or a varying nature, and then returned to The field. I shot the sun, I shot the sun on the grass, I shot the hills, and then looked behind me.
“Tiger sir” Said the escorting officer.
“Where” I said.
“There” he pointed to wards a single jeep. I sighed, put my camera back into its towel and said:
” Lets have a look then”

We reversed up to the single jeep and looked up onto the side of a small hill. There was Chakra, serenly and regally padded through the trees. Oblivious of the now few, but silent cars, she was going about her business in her own territory. The sun was now gone, and Balu and Kaptan were worried about loosing their permits and business licence.
“Please can I drive little fast to gate?” He asked nervously “if late, we have big fine and this car cannot enter again for 21 days”

“Sure, Balu, I’ve seen it all now.” I looked at the green topped trees and the brown grass fields one last time. “Now you can drive home fast”

---

---