One of our highest priorities here in India was trying to catch a glimpse of the elusive royal Bengal tiger. We’d included a visit to Ranthambore National Park on our list of places to see, and set aside a couple of extra days for what we anticipated would be one of the most special moments of the Rajasthani experience, if not the entire trip.
After the unscheduled diversion back to Jaipur to sort out the shipping, and the time it took to go round the houses with the courier guys to find the right box (!), by early evening we’d arrived in Sawai Madhopur which is the little village just outside the Park entrance. We’d booked a jeep for the safari the next day and were being picked up by the Park guides at 6.15am so after toasting a few too many Kingfishers to what lay ahead we decided to have an early night.
The next day the guides picked us up as arranged (‘Indian’ time is a lot like ‘Island’ time, so it was just before 7am that the jeep actually turned up to collect us outside the Hotel). After introductions and handshakes we set off down the dusty rusty-red lanes towards the sprawling terrain of one of India’s largest national parks, which covers roughly 400 square kilometres. It’s not really known how many tigers there actually are in Ranthambore because they move around territories a lot, but it’s thought to be somewhere in the range of 60-70.
We were sharing the jeep with a young Indian couple who’d just spent a few years living in Brisbane, Eric from Sweden, and John, a retired chap from northern England decked out in khakis.
Confined to the back of the open-top jeep, we were sitting ducks for the park hawkers that lined the stone walls leading to the entrance of zone 2 (the park has 10 zones all up), all very keen on us dressing for the occasion. “Jungle hat for you Sir?” “Madam would you like a specially-designed tiger scarf?”
Today there were also crowds of people (pilgrims) making their way up the public road toward Ranthambore Fort to visit the Ganesh Temple. The Fort sits high above the Park with the road around it stretching five kilometres, and it was once used as a base for the hunting Maharajas of Jaipur. The Ganesh Temple, close to the main gate to the Fort, regularly (monthly on a Wednesday) attracts a steady flow of pilgrims who are mainly from the rural villages nearby. It gets ultra busy during the annual Ganesh festival, when tens of thousands of pilgrims (today there were a few hundred) visit the Temple from all over the country.
Safari-mad ‘English John’ told us that the late start and heavy foot traffic near the main tracks was not going to be good for the tiger spotting everyone had paid a handsome sum for. This was his 20th-something consecutive day and he was anxious to achieve his 30th sighting. Mel told him this might mean he could be our lucky charm! But he was visibly frustrated and getting madder by the minute.
Within five minutes of entering the gates and having come flying round a blind corner, we came to a sudden halt – a row of jeeps ahead of us with no way to pass. The drivers of the other jeeps were frantically waving and trying to reverse. What the hell was going on?!
And there she was. Just gracefully and casually ambling along (just like our Morse or Satchmo or Squeak would wander up the driveway back home) weaving her way between the five or so jeeps that had parked up to see this magnificent girl, confident she was safe, that she was the star of the show.
It was so surreal. Mel looked like she was going to burst into tears she got so emotional, and the silence was only broken by the fluttering of cameras (some with amazing National Geographic-type lenses) and smartphones. We were just metres away for a good five or ten minutes, and when she jumped up into bush along the side of the road we followed her for a short time until she disappeared into the scrub. I’m sure she was thinking ‘OK, shows over you lot!’, as she headed back into the park’s rough terrain. My goodness, she was such a beautiful creature.
We’re all still grinning and overflowing with emotion and excitement when ‘English-John’ pipes up, brashly instructing the guides to break away from the rest of the jeeps and head deeper into the park. Keeping the guides on their toes was the aim of the game he said, as they were now undoubtably thinking ‘job done’. So we made a break for it (doing a 7-point turn) and ventured off into the wild, all hoping we’d be lucky enough to spot another tiger or two.
Sweeping rocky landscapes and dry stream beds along the way gave a true sense of how this part of the country really is in the summer months. But we still got to see plenty of park activity, with the monkeys cheekily darting from tree to tree, woodpeckers, a kingfisher (the flying kind), peacocks as well as a few of the aggressive yet cute Indian grey mongoose. There were spotted deer dotted along the way as well as sambar (which looked a bit like a deer crossed with a cow crossed with a moose) – all being a sweet or salty juicy meal for a hungry tiger.
After about three hours we (‘English-John’!) decided we should spend the final moments under the most enormous Banyan tree, surrounded by ‘the flame of the forest’ (a tree with brilliant orange flowers), gazing up toward Ranthambore Fort. A truly beautiful way to sign-off many special moments! ‘English-John’ told us more about Arrowhead, the tiger we’d just seen, how she’s about four and half years old and has three ten month old cubs (probably in one of the other zones while she’s out looking for breakfast for everyone). He also told us the day before one of the big boys ‘Star Male’ had died which was a bit distressing for everyone especially wildlife protection advocates. He was about fourteen, a bit of a legend, and they still don’t seem to know what had gone wrong. What an amazing experience, and that afternoon Mel and I again toasted the white rat who’d done his bit to make sure we’d seen another one of India’s gems.
Now from one jungle to another. Population nearly 22 million – Mumbai, what have you got up your sleeve for us?!
