BootsnAll Travel Network



Tiger Tales

The number one thing to see in India for me was tigers. India’s parks provide the best opportunity to see wild tigers in the world, but I was a bit skeptical. India’s government has been pumping up the census numbers for years and their protection of the tigers has been scandalous including the realization in 2005 that one of its top parks (Sariska) had lost all of its tigers to poaching using poison and perpetrated by its own staff. A dead tiger is worth $10,000 in India and maybe ten times that once it gets to China so in a country where most make less than two dollars per day the tiger’s days are limited.  I think the only chance the tigers have is through tourism.  To improve our odds, I chose Ranthambhore National Park in Rajasthan because it is a dry deciduous forest landscape which provides excellent viewing and the tigers are known to be active during the day and also known to ignore humans watching from their jeeps or trucks.  It’s also a park that has embraced community-based conservation where the community benefits from the park revenues and through tourism.  Furthermore, I booked a full-day and two half-day jeep rides ahead so that we would not be stuck in the loud, diesel belching “canters” (trucks with seats) with 20+ talkative tourists. The research and planning paid off fantastically.

In Africa, a game drive takes place in a closed SUV or van with tops that pop open for viewing. Lions come close to the vehicles and they could jump in, but they seem to pretty much ignore the vehicles unless they are using them for shade for a nap. The vehicle’s protection is more likely needed for the long drives on roads, tsetse flies and elephant attack. The jeeps used in India have no tops and have room for six passengers on two benches behind the driver. No long rides, tsetse flies or elephants to worry about.  Just tigers who are known to walk up to the jeeps especially while on the hunt.

Ranthambhore’s 400 sq kilometer public area is divided into five zones in order to manage the safari traffic.  Our first ride was a full-day trip which is done in zone 5 which is the largest.  The park is closed between 10 AM and 2 PM so the only way to do zone 5 is to commit to a drive out to one end of the zone, stay four hours at a guard post and then do the afternoon drive headed back to the entrance.  It’s a long day, but the larger trucks do not do it so there are less touristas and a private viewing is quite possible.  Less vehicles also means a longer viewing since there is no need to have to share.  We were 90 minutes into our first drive and we were already amazed by the landscapes and the quantity of wildlife including birds and the tiger food such as sambar, spotted dear and bluebull.  I was hoping to have one glimpse of a tiger in both days, but our first view happened as we came around a bend with a bridge over a waterway.  Two other vehicles were already there so we had the driver stop on the bridge.  It was a lucky call because the tiger walked away from the other jeeps and headed to the stream where he started to drink water giving us an unobstructed view.  He looked right at us and that was quite exhilarating.  The tiger then moved up the river and the other jeeps followed along the trail.  We moved up behind them and had a very close position.  The tiger was very calm even though the peacocks, sambar, monkeys, eagles and other birds were alarming about his presence.  I thought we were in for a long view when all of a sudden he got agitated, stared down the river and then fled across the water and up the cliff on the other side demonstrating his power going over the vertical rock formation.  I was disappointed that he fled, but also quite excited about having an encounter so quickly when I caught movement behind our parked jeep.  I turned and two unarmed men were walking to us.  I wanted to tell them that they must be insane since there is a tiger nearby, but realized these guys work for the park and they were the cause of the tiger fleeing.  We learned during our time at Ranthambhore that they have some very strange habits and this was a great demonstration given that they basically ruined the viewing through their stupidity.  As I have seen in Africa with lions, the tiger has no fear of humans in a jeep at a few meters distance, but will run fast if a human on foot is much further away.  These tigers remember hunting!

Regardless of the park employee “mistake”, we had a great morning drive and we had seen a large male tiger on the prowl.  After our four hour wait (should have brought a book), we re-entered zone five in search of another tiger and other wildlife.  We were most of the way out of the zone when our guide heard the call of a sambar (deer) which is usually only vocalized when a tiger is nearby.  We could easily have missed this sound if it was not for a group of peacocks.  The park is full of the peacocks, but I had very little luck with their tails and sunlight all day until we came across six males in nice light at the end of the day.  I consumed a bit of time with them thinking this was it for the day.  This delay allowed us to be in the right place at the right time.  We patiently stayed still after hearing the sambar’s alarm call.  Through the woods, I was watching a slope on the other side of a stream hoping to get a glimpse of the cat from a distance.  Our guide asked for my binoculars thinking he had seen a movement.  Suddenly, the tiger emerged from the woods and walked parallel to our vehicle.  The driver was trying to get close to the animal when I told him to stop because we were close enough for filming.  The tiger crossed the road in front of us and then we had more viewing on the other side.  It was fantastic, but the driver was mad because he said he could have put the jeep in between the tiger and where it was headed and we would have been on top of it for a longer time.  I explained to him that is a very bad practice and the lens on our cameras nullify any need to interfere with the tiger.  My claim is that the park officials should not be harassing the wildlife even if it means shortened viewing.  They don’t see it this way and want to entertain the visitors as much as possible.   Two tigers on one day… fantastic!  Add in all the birds like eagles, storks, peacocks and owls plus the mammals and it was more than a fantastic day.

We were able to ask for zone 4 the next morning.  The day before we were told that there was a female and her two “cubs” in that zone.  We drove well into the zone before we came across a couple of jeeps and a tiger.  It was one of the “cubs”.  I laughed as soon as I saw it because it was almost adult-size.  A cub is something I can pick up, I thought.  More jeeps arrived and I soon saw how great zone 5 was because it does not get the traffic.  A canter even pulled up.  The jeeps went all around the tiger and it was a real mess.  Our driver backed away and as we were looking behind, the mother crossed into the road.  That’s two tigers in five minutes and we had a better viewing of her since the main bulk of vehicles were chasing the first tiger.  As the second tiger moved off, we continued out of the area and there appeared the other “cub” lying on the ground very near to us.  It eventually got up and strode by us to end our private viewing.  We bee-lined away before the crowd found us and we discovered serene areas in the zone 4 before ending the morning drive.  That made five tigers and I was hopeful just to see one!

The afternoon drive to zone 2 was quite nice especially since it gave us even more views of the park’s beautiful landscapes. As we were entering our zone, we came across canters and jeeps which must have been more than half in the park.  They were near a gully that had a tree and there was a tiger resting in the shade of the tree on the side furthest from our location.  We could not get closer because the tiger was in zone 3 rather than the one we were assigned.  So we parked and waited to see if it would come out.  Patience paid off again.  This time the tiger came out and walked along the slope of the gully aimed right at our jeep.  It all became a flurry of photographs, but it also got scary because he was headed right at us and we were sitting in an open vehicle.  Looking through the long lens and seeing him look straight through me made me jump a couple of times and I had to stop looking through the camera.  As trusted/prayed for, the tiger veered around the front of our jeep and proceeded on.  As soon as he cleared the road, the chase was on with all zones present headed into ours.  Our driver leap-frogged everyone else when they were fooled to stop as the tiger entered bush and he put us in control of the pace.  The tiger appeared to our right a few meters in the bush and just ahead was a herd of sambar deer.  Everyone froze including all sambar, the tiger and the witnesses.  The sambar were paralyzed knowing something was up.  They looked our way in their stupefied way and halfway between were two tiger ears above the grass – like a cartoon!  I am not sure how long we were all frozen, but eventually the big sambar buck made the alarm call, the herd ran and the tiger gave chase.  Unfortunately, tigers are only about 10% successful when hunting (and probably a lot less in this type of surprise confrontation) and this one was the normal miss.  That’s right, six tigers in two days.  Go Ranthambhore!  Go Tigers!

We had two complete days or so we thought.  Ranthambhore also has a lot of leopards which stay out of the tiger areas so as not to become a tiger meal.  We saw one in the morning, but it was just a silhouette on a clifftop and I told Mr. X that we cannot claim to have seen one.  He checked later and what may have been a rock was gone so it was likely a leopard.  On the way out of the park we came across a couple of cars.  A leopard was just above the road.  Since we were out of the park, we were able to get out of the vehicles for better photos.  I am not sure that was a smart idea, but it is unlikely a leopard would come down to where people were around like this.  I think I messed up every photo and video opportunity I had for this relatively close encounter, but it sure was nice to see such an elusive animal and just topped off the stay at Ranthambhore completely.

I would like to see tigers again from the back of an elephant, but that will need to wait for another visit to India and another park.



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