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Published: December 15th 2013
11th December
Mr Harinder had been keen to take us shopping for a few days and this morning we gave in and went. The shop we went to does some of their block printing on fabric and gave a little demo which was interesting and then displayed all sorts of stuff for us to buy,some of it was lovely and some was not so lovely. Everyone says here 'this is India, anything is possible" so whatever you want they will make it and we decided to have various things made, Sal had a jacket and a couple of other things, Col had a waist coat and a couple of shirts, the problem to us was we were about to drive a couple of hundred kilometres, but of course, this is India and nothing is a problem, it would come to us!
We set off for Rathambore, another brilliant journey passing madly busy little towns, lots going on, half of which we couldn't understand, often filthy and then we would pass beautifully looked after farmlands and a fascinating array of modes of transport on the road. We are all feeling tired as we have been on the go non stop,
but you can't afford to nod off in case you miss something!
Rathambore is probably best known for it tigers where 1000's of people come for safaris and are usually disappointed as they often don't see any, so we realised that this was nature and our chances were remote. Our hotel looked stunning as we approached and was stunning when we arrived, all white marble with beautiful gardens. We had met the owner of the hotel at the wedding so it would seem he had upgraded us to superior rooms, very nice thank you.
12th December
We were out on our first safari and 7am, it was cold so we were well wrapped up, within minutes, our guide saw tracks with great big tiger paws and then we saw a tiger! We couldn't believe it! We couldn't see him that well as he was laying down, licking his paws and well camouflaged. What a great start! We were very happy and when the tiger disappeared in the trees we set off to see more. It was a very bumpy ride and off we went seeing all sorts of deer, antelope, boar, crocs mongoose and various
birds. Our guide, Vivek was great and had a very good knowledge of the animals and the driver obviously knew his way around, coming to the end of our morning safari, we spotted several other jeeps had stopped so there was another sighting and as we stopped the tiger appeared, right in front of us, we had front row seats. It was just so exciting and for some weird reason, Sal burst into tears!! He literally came out of the trees and down on to the road, our driver was backing up to give him space, all of us had cameras and all of us failed to take a decent shot, I think we were shaking with excitement. WOW ! That was something else and we all felt completely overwhelmed to have seen such a beautiful creature just a few feet away from us.
We went back to our marble palace and had brunch and went out on another safari in the afternoon which we all enjoyed but no tigers but felt extremely lucky to have seen a wild tiger up close.
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John Ring
non-member comment
tiger
Nice picture"s and blog! Interesting reading