Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

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India, Days 9 - 13 Thursday - Saturday

Overnight, email telling us that our flight home has been changed from 5:30 pm departure to 9am the same day. Bugger. Have to change our overnight booking and now have a 16 hour wait at Abu Dhabi. Think it may have something to do with the Kashmir situation.

Funny as we leaving the hotel in the morning. It is usual on Explore trips for suitcases to be collected from outside of room, but we tend to carry ours to the collection spot. This morning, as we were leaving, we saw that all the bags had been put on the coach except for Pip's rucksack. They thought it was her day bag ?

The morning/early afternoon on Thursday was spent travelling to Ranthambore Park, passing through many villages where the women were working in the fields, or washing clothes, or pots, or sweeping and lots of men were just sitting around, chatting, drinking coffee. It is, of course, not their place to do anything remotely 'domestic'. Cows, boars, dogs everywhere but strangely hardly seen any chickens, and only 3 domestic cats in the whole trip.

At one stage we stopped to photo a field of camels being tended over by 2 men, just like a flock of sheep or herd of cows. The men, unsurprisingly, approached the coach looking for payment.

After checking in to our 1 night hotel we had our first game drive in a very hard suspension 6 seater, totally open 'jeep'. Ranthambore National Park was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1957, although it was still used as a hunting reserve until the early 1970s. It became part of the Project Tiger Scheme in 1974, and today is home to around 80 tigers. However, the safari jeeps are not allowed to roam the whole Park willy-nilly. The Park is split into 10 zones, and groups are allocated to zones at random.

Our afternoon drive was in zone 6, and our Park guide said there were 4 tigers in the zone, but one tends to wander into zone 10. Apparently the cats are not trained enough to know where the zone boundaries are ?. Zone 10 only has 2 tigers. [At the start of the morning drive the next day, when we found ourselves in zone 10, Geoff pointed out that we were 'accessing' 6 tigers max over the two zones, so that left an average of 7-8 in each of the other zones. Never did find out which zone had the most!].

There was a lot of tiger food about - antelope, deer of many different sizes - as well as 2 large troops of langur monkeys and several bird species. The park is a wonderful mix of lakes, forests, steep cliffs and rocky outcrops. Not exactly jungle but a quiet respite from the madness that is India. But tigers were proving very elusive indeed.

Then, around 3 hours in there was bedlam. A tiger had been spotted and 7 or 8 jeeps and larger carriers descended on the viewing point at the same time. The mad scramble for access made India town driving look positively polite by comparison. We thought our jeep, moving forward to the narrow entrance to the viewpoint, was going to push another, reversing jeep out of the way!

There were however 2 other problems. 1 - the tiger was some way off, and in bushes, and so well camouflaged in. The picture says it all - tiger stripes but hardly good viewing. 2 - the viewpoint was off the official track, and 'illegal'. If a Park Ranger had happened by the guide / driver / vehicle could have been 'fined ' by several weeks of licence withdrawal.

So, the picture shows we 'saw' one but hardly satisfactorily. The guide said there were two there. ??? Maybe better in the morning.

Evening, there was a small local 'troupe' entertaining us, but somewhat drowned out by the Bollywood Indian Birthday Disco blasting out just over the wall.

Early, cold start for the Friday morning drive, into zone 10, with only 2, maybe 3 tigers. A much more roughly tracked part of the Park. Hanging on for dear life up and down some of the pure rock roads. Much, much less wildlife and therefore tiger food. 2 & half hours in and not looking at all hopeful. BUT, driving along a track with a low wall to its left there were 3 parked jeeps.

And off to the left, about 10 yards away, was a tigress lying down. Not a great view from where we were in the vehicle queue, but she obliged by getting up and walking in the rearwards direction of the traffic. There were 5 jeeps there, and we all started reversing to follow her for a few hundred yards. Some times she stopped and looked across, clearly contemplating cutting across our trackway. We were even concerned that she might be eyeing us up for breakfast. But her hesitation made the jeeps stop. She overtook us all by around 50 feet, and crossed, bounding behind the rearmost jeep. Reached some bushes on the other side, contemplated us all for a while, and then sauntered off into the undergrowth.

Tiger spotted. Mission accomplished.

We all returned for breakfast, all on cloud 9, before leaving for Jaipur.

Jaipur, sometimes called the Pink City, was first painted pink on the orders of Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh to celebrate the visit of Prince Albert in 1853. He understood it to be that pink was Albert's favourite colour. However the natural pigmentation doesn't hold its colour properly and the color is now essentially terracotta orange.

No rest on arrival, straight in to the Jantar Mantar, a star-gazing observatory built by Jaipur Singh, the great Maharaja astronomer in 1734. A local guide told us how the instruments worked, including the world's largest sundial supposedly accurate to 2 seconds - though frankly Paul thought the fuzziness of the shadow's edge would negate that degree of accuracy

From there we walked, basically across the square, to the City Palace, 1732, the seat of the Maharaja of Jaipur. Very busy, far more than the Taj Mahal. A good museum of textiles, including a rare 1640 pashmina carpet. And an interesting display of voluminous clothes worn by Sawai Modhosingh who was 3.9 feet wide and weighed 550 lbs.

Beautiful peacock design doors, and two huge sterling silver vessels 5.2 feet high, weighing 340kgs and a capacity of 4000 litres. Made from 14000 melted silver coins they are in the Guinness Book of World Records for their size. The very pious hindu, Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh had them made to carry Ganges water to drink on his trip to England in 1901 for King Edward VII's coronation because he was finicky about consuming English water. We suspect the state of Ganges water has deteriorated significantly since then!

And then we had a circular bicycle rickshaw ride - our bloke was somewhat elderly and at times we felt we should dismount and help him push it up the slopes - before finally reaching our hotel. With decent plumbing - hurrah.

At last we each tried a different thali, one Rajasthani, one Punjabi, for dinner.

Saturday morning we had a quick photo-op stop at the Palace of the Winds, a 5 storey facade, built around 1760, and which features as the image for Jaipur. The lattice design enabled the royal ladies to observe the plebs in the street below. They had to obey the strict rules of 'purdah' which forbade them from appearing in public without face coverings. What we see is actually the rear of the palace.

Up to the Amber Fort, accessed by jeep to its hilltop location, rather than the available elephant ride. A very impressive hilltop fortress built 1592 by Raja Monday Singh I. The star feature here was the Chamber of Mirrors, absolutely stunning. Great views down to the lower grounds, garden and town beyond. The local guide showed us a photo of the garden when its lake is full of water and it appears to 'float' on top.

At one stage, when we were going around, a couple of the group heard / saw a tourist - a chubby German - shove an empty plastic water bottle into a barrier pillar. Based on those ' witness statements' and the guy being identified Paul removed the bottle, hurried after the guy, tapped him on the shoulder and handed over the empty bottle with a 'I think you mislaid this!'. Guy shoved it into his pocket ?

Paul, very surreptitiously, or so he thought, took a picture of a resting, cleaning lady in her stunning yellow sari. We had just exited the courtyard when she appeared at our shoulder demanding money. Paul - 'par for the course', Pip - 'unbelievable '.

Exiting via the 'gift shop' ie running the gamut of streets hawkers thrusting their goods into our faces, we watched an entertaining puppet show.

A quick photo-op stop for the Water Palace, and pelicans (not flamingos as Avi called them ?), and on to a couple of craft locations. Firstly Channi Carpets & Textiles, one of the oldest in Jaipur. Watched block printing, and hand weaving - though the carpets are actually made by 5000 home weavers around the city. The carpets were very tempting, they even ship so no luggage worries, but we couldn't convince ourselves that we had a suitable space back home. 2 of the group did splash the cash. There was also a dazzling array of printed fabrics and 3 did have garments made, delivered to the hotel that evening.

Jaipur is a leading centre for precious and semi-precious stones cutting and polishing, and jewellery manufacture. After lunch we went to a gem/jewellry, family workshop. They do work for several London shops as well as Sting / Trudi Styler and the Countess of Wessex. We're sure the prices were 'competitive ' but there was a lot of very expensive bling available. Paul however managed to buy a Pip-style Indian ruby bracelet - now squirelled away for our ruby wedding later this year.

A final wander around a very touristy, in your face, shopping area - which most of the group were happy to exit early - hotel, final group meal, and this Explore trip is over.

Sunday - Pip not feeling too well. Revising train from Amritsar to Delhi because of earlier flight home proving tortuous. Amritsar flights getting stopped /started /stopped ... because of Kashmir situation. .....

We have called in the Ethiad Airways free change option - available because they have changed our flight time home substantially - and are flying home on Thursday, in 4 days time. Not going to Amritsar, have rebooked into Delhi for the last two nights ( new flight out is 4.15 am! so we won't hotel the 'night' of departure). Would hate to have sorted all that out without wifi / internet and, shock/horror for us as we don't usually use when travelling abroad, mobile phone.

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