I have always wanted to see a tiger in the wild. To the extent that my profile picture on my web-page when I was in graduate school, was that of a tiger in Bandhavgadh. Finally in December 2011, I managed to go to Ranthambhore in Rajasthan to fulfill this ambition.
Ranthambhore is located in Sawai Madhopur, a little village about 4 hours away by car from Jaipur. We arrived at Ranthambore too late for the evening safari and had nothing much to do for the rest of the evening. Fortunately, the place where we stayed (The Pug Mark) had some folk entertainment planned and we spent a good part of the evening listening to these guys:
whose enthusiasm went up the roof when they saw that we were listening.
The resort managers told us that the safari would leave at 6:45 am the next day and that we should be ready by 6:30 for a quick snack before that. I was a little surprised at that because I had imagined that, like in South Africa, we would be in the forest way before dawn so that we can catch the predator when they were busy looking for their meal.
We asked for a wake up call, but I was up way before the call, unable to contain my enthusiasm. At 6:15 I was at the dining hall gobbling up some biscuits and milk and by 6:30 we were out by the front "lobby" waiting for the canter to show up. We waited... and we waited... and we waited. No canter. No jeep. The other, more sane, occupants of the resort finally joined us in the foyer and waited along with us, still nothing.
We tried various polite ways of letting the guy at the front desk know that we were getting impatient: pacing around, walking to the gate and back, clicking random pics of unremarkable things.
I don't think it registered. So finally we asked them what the time was. 7:15am.
7:15? 7:fif..?What?!! The tiger must be done with his breakfast and gone on to read the newspapers or check Facebook updates, whichever it is they do these days!!
Ranthambhore is located in Sawai Madhopur, a little village about 4 hours away by car from Jaipur. We arrived at Ranthambore too late for the evening safari and had nothing much to do for the rest of the evening. Fortunately, the place where we stayed (The Pug Mark) had some folk entertainment planned and we spent a good part of the evening listening to these guys:
The resort managers told us that the safari would leave at 6:45 am the next day and that we should be ready by 6:30 for a quick snack before that. I was a little surprised at that because I had imagined that, like in South Africa, we would be in the forest way before dawn so that we can catch the predator when they were busy looking for their meal.
We asked for a wake up call, but I was up way before the call, unable to contain my enthusiasm. At 6:15 I was at the dining hall gobbling up some biscuits and milk and by 6:30 we were out by the front "lobby" waiting for the canter to show up. We waited... and we waited... and we waited. No canter. No jeep. The other, more sane, occupants of the resort finally joined us in the foyer and waited along with us, still nothing.
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| insert any bollywood/kollywood/indi-wood virah song here: Jiya bekaraar hai, for example! |
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| Random unremarkable thing |
I don't think it registered. So finally we asked them what the time was. 7:15am.
7:15? 7:fif..?What?!! The tiger must be done with his breakfast and gone on to read the newspapers or check Facebook updates, whichever it is they do these days!!
