Crouching TIGER, happy human!
We took the train from Varanasi to Umaria, some 30km from the Bandhavgarh National Park, where we planned to make our last attempt at seeing a tiger in the wild. The train was delayed by 3 hours and we arrived at 2am, but managed to get a lift with some other travellers to a cheap home stay near the park gate.
Bandhavgarh National Park boasts with the highest tiger density in the world - some 55 tigers in an area of 450 sq km. This is also the place where the first white tigers were found and sets the scene for the story "The Jungle Book".
After a day of rest, we moved to a more upmarket resort called the White Tiger Forest Lodge - great food and a great view from our room on the park boundary. The next day, we set off early for an open jeep safari into the park. It was a bit of a circus, really. A whistle is blown and more than 30 jeeps race into the park at 6:30 am, all trying to see tigers. Fortunately routes are allocated, so it is not as crowded as it could have been. After the route has been completed (often at speed), all jeeps gather at a specific point to exchange information about their tiger sightings, if any. Surprisingly many saw tigers as well as sloth bears. Then everyone sped off again. Elephants are also used to track down a few tigers and one can then go for a short (expensive) elephant ride to see the tigers that had been tracked down. We decided to go to a remote area of the park and rather try our luck there than choke in the dust of the other jeeps...
Every now and then we would stop and listen. Deer sound alarm calls when a predator is on the move and that is the sign we would wait for. We heard a call and drove in that direction. We then heard the call again, this time behind us and realized that we had driven too far. We turned back along the same track and could not believe our eyes when a tigress was walking in the road where we had just driven! We followed her for more than 1km and it was just us - fantastic! She was quite a bit bigger than what one may have expected and even more beautiful than in the pictures.
Johan was ecstatic and Janine very relieved as Johan declared earlier that we are not going home without seeing a tiger in the wild! We did not see any more tigers on our next two game drives, but the memory of that tiger will forever be etched into our minds. Mission accomplished.
Bandhavgarh National Park boasts with the highest tiger density in the world - some 55 tigers in an area of 450 sq km. This is also the place where the first white tigers were found and sets the scene for the story "The Jungle Book".
After a day of rest, we moved to a more upmarket resort called the White Tiger Forest Lodge - great food and a great view from our room on the park boundary. The next day, we set off early for an open jeep safari into the park. It was a bit of a circus, really. A whistle is blown and more than 30 jeeps race into the park at 6:30 am, all trying to see tigers. Fortunately routes are allocated, so it is not as crowded as it could have been. After the route has been completed (often at speed), all jeeps gather at a specific point to exchange information about their tiger sightings, if any. Surprisingly many saw tigers as well as sloth bears. Then everyone sped off again. Elephants are also used to track down a few tigers and one can then go for a short (expensive) elephant ride to see the tigers that had been tracked down. We decided to go to a remote area of the park and rather try our luck there than choke in the dust of the other jeeps...
Every now and then we would stop and listen. Deer sound alarm calls when a predator is on the move and that is the sign we would wait for. We heard a call and drove in that direction. We then heard the call again, this time behind us and realized that we had driven too far. We turned back along the same track and could not believe our eyes when a tigress was walking in the road where we had just driven! We followed her for more than 1km and it was just us - fantastic! She was quite a bit bigger than what one may have expected and even more beautiful than in the pictures.
Johan was ecstatic and Janine very relieved as Johan declared earlier that we are not going home without seeing a tiger in the wild! We did not see any more tigers on our next two game drives, but the memory of that tiger will forever be etched into our minds. Mission accomplished.
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