I visited Ranthambore in April, 2015 (between 8th April 2015 and 12th April, 2015). From Bangalore, reached Jaipur via flight. Our Photo Tour organizer, Toehold, had organized a vehicle for me and a co traveller to reach our hotel (Anuraga Tree House lodge in Sawai Madhopur). Had some amazing Dhaba style food on the way to the hotel. The hotel itself is palacial. The rooms are exotic and though not the largest I have seen, have a feeling of the traditional Rajasthani culture.
Since I had arrived a day early, I had an option to go on an extra safari, which I gladly took. 🙂 Our tour skipper, Sachin Rai, is an awesome person to hang out with. His knowledge of everything wild is amazing!
The safaris started.
Sachin mentioned that there were good tiger sightings in the previous safari batch he had organized on the previous days. Unfortunately, there was a heavy rain the day before we landed there. In case you don’t know, the best way to spot tigers is to wait near watering holes and lakes during summer. Since the tigers need water (as do everyone else), they will most certainly take a walk to these watering holes. What happens after a heavy rain is, puddles form inside the forest in many places. This means that the tigers don’t need to come into the toursist area. They probably prefer to stay hidden. Unfortunate for us, really. What this really meant for me is that, as someone who was waiting to spot their first tiger in the wild, I was left without any sightings. Safari after safari, we roamed around our assigned zones to no luck. There were some close encouters. Another jeep with my co participants from Toehold were blessed with a momentary sighting.
Another special thing about Ranthambore is that it has some old temples within the forest area. This means, once in a while, there will be a lot of people visiting the temples deep within the forest, mostly on foot.
The search for tigers continued for quite a few safaris. I was getting some good photos of the birds and animals in the forest but the big cat remained elusive.
The sunsets on the drive back from the park to the hotels were also amazing. I requested the driver to stop once to get this photo and am pretty proud of this:
We were hearing stories of many tiger sightings happening around the park but we were getting none. 🙁 We were heading out to the park one morning and we came across a middle aged man sitting on the side of the road. He mentioned that a tiger had just crossed his path when he was out for his morning walk. Some tigers have been known to venture out of the forest once in a while and this gentleman was one of those to witness this. Just imagine going about your regular walk and a big huge male tiger just casually crosses your path!
We were approaching the end of the tour. Still no luck. In one tea time conversation with Sachin, we were talking about marriage, etc. I told him that I had no interest in getting married. He asked me “Which would you prefer, spotting a wild tiger or never getting married?”. I told him I am ok without seeing a tiger but don’t want to get married :P. He quipped that if I agreed to get married, I will get to see a wild tiger. I said, OK, sure 🙂 Let me see a wild tiger first and then I will get married. Will come back to this later
It was the last safari. Apart from a very distant leopard, we had spotted no big cats in this place that is famous for it’s tiger sightings. When I visited Kabini and Bandipur in 2014, it was the same case there as well. I had accepted that I will have to wait for another tour to see my first wild tiger. The tour would end in about an hour. Our jeep was just parked by a lake and we all sat in gloomy silence. Finally, we thought, thats it, lets go back to the hotel. We started heading back and on the way back, we saw some jeeps hurriedly going towards somewhere. We just followed and behold!! Not one, not two but three tiger cubs playing around in the lush green grass. Oh the relief!
The first photo of a wild tiger I have is the one in which it is pooping!
The tiger cubs played around for quite a while. We got our stomach full of photos for a good half an hour or so before the mother came and called them out. The three cubs followed her to another zone (which we could not venture into) and disappeared.
The tigers we spotted were Krishna (the mother), Lighning, Arrow head and Packman There is a nice documentary on the Ranthambore tigers:
This is another documentary specific to Krishna and her cubs:
We came back to the hotel quite happy! Why wouldn’t we be after such a good sighting! We headed out to the Jaipur airport and back home from there, with a SD card full of photos and a mind full of fresh and happy memories.
A week later, I met my wife 🙂
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