Spirit of India Day 7 Tiger Safari!

Spirit of India Day 7

I forgot to mention that on this trip there are 10 women and five men. Three of the men are with their partners, and there are only two single men, Josh and I. Josh paid for the single supplement to get his own room, and as a result I get my own room!

Up at the crack of dawn again. We were picked up by our 16 seat safari jeep and headed into Ranthambhore National Park, one of the homes of the Royal Bengal tiger. We drove through the gate along the road between two massive rock cliffs. Beautiful surroundings. There are remnants of old structures that were used in the days of the Maharaja and his hunting parties. The roads were rough, it was forested and the area was very dry as we are here just before monsoon season. We had a driver, who seemed to be in a hurry to get finished and a naturalist, who said very little. We drove for about three hours and saw lots of peacocks, langur monkeys, white spotted deer, sambhar deer, a mongoose, a crocodile and lots of other birds, but sadly (but not unexpectedly) no tiger.

When we got back, we had lunch and had the early afternoon to kick back, relax and enjoy our resort. They have a pool and I made use of that. With the 35 degree heat it was nice to cool off. I met two women from Montreal who were on a different safari in the morning and they told me they had seen a tiger and got lots of great shots. Our group is hoping for similar luck.

About 3pm we loaded up on the safari jeep for another trip into the park. This time we had a driver who obviously wanted to find a tiger for us. It was also obvious that he knew the park because he found us an owl sitting on a nest buried in a tree. You couldn't see it unless you knew it was there. We drove around for a couple of hours seeing monkeys, peacocks and deer, always stopping to ask other vehicles what they had seen. Finally our driver spotted a tiger laying down in her lair! Unfortunately she was quite away off the road and my photo is not the best (although only two of us managed to get a shot this good- you have to zoom in on the photo). Seeing a tiger in the wild made the day really memorable. We stayed and watched for a bit with three other jeeps that showed up, and then we headed back to camp.

When we got back we had a little freshen up time before dinner, which was an outdoor bbq with live Indian music and dance for entertainment. I met up with the two women from Montreal again (Geraldine and Claudette) and asked to see their tiger pictures. They were fantastic, so I asked if they would let me copy them and they were gracious enough to let me! The great photo of the tiger is theirs. We talked about travelling for a bit and where we'd been. Then I introduced them to some of the people in my group who were sitting around having a beer, and we all hung out until about midnight before turning in. Our host at the camp, Shukla, joined us for awhile too. He is a very nice man with a great sense of humour. Great night to be sitting outside, warm with lots of stars.