Indians For Guns

This Saturday (24th Nov), we were on our way to Kota (Rajasthan) for some work and as we passed Tonk city, two of us (my sis-in-law's hubby & I) began to recall the last time we'd been on this highway. It was late 2003, and we'd "stolen" a trip to Ranthambhore... my wife was grounded on account of her having delivered our son just a month and a half back, and my sis-in-law was carrying their first child at the time. All of us were visiting my in-laws (in Jaipur) and over dinner we both had decided that we might as well have some fun on this trip... Ranthambhore was just a few hours drive from Jaipur and we found ourselves driving towards Sawai Madhopur in the wee hours of the morning... We thought we'd make it there in time for the morning excursion and head back to Jaipur after lunch. As things turned out, on reaching there we found out that we'd missed the morning trip into the park (park entry is at 7:30am & exit by 10:30am), also they have strict rules as to how many vehicles (and people) are permitted in the park at any one time - as one would expect, all of those slots were booked well in advance! A flurry of phone calls later and we'd wrangled ourselves a Maruti Gypsy with the required permits for a safari that afternoon and... call it beginners luck, but 2 minutes after entering the park we spotted a young female tiger basking in the sun, not 20 meters away! It was an awesome sight and we stayed there for a good 15-20 minutes taking pictures and watching her, till she eventually got irritated with the vehicles and people and moved off into the undergrowth.

My friend who was accompanying us, was quite enthused with all this "tiger talk" and by consensus the Kota trip was scratched and the car turned around - new heading Ranthambhore National Park Having wizened up after our previous visit there, we immediately started making phone calls to ensure that we'd have a place to spend the night and have a Gypsy booked for the Safari the next morning. After a few phone calls, we'd managed to secure a suite at Jhoomar Bawri and 3 spots on an open top mini-bus for the morning safari. We tried really hard to secure one of the 3 "official pool" gypsy's that the local administration keeps on stand by for visiting 'dignitaries', but it being peak season there were real 'dignitaries' in queue and we didn't stand a chance!


Jhoomar Bawri - Used to be the hunting lodge of Jaipur royalty but is now run by the RTDC and in true govt. style they've managed to ruin a lovely property! Still, this is the only hotel there situated within the forest and the views are spectacular!

We reached around 6:30-7:00pm and having checked in, inquired about what time we'd be picked up in the morning. Since none of us was particularly interested in sitting around watching cable tv, we headed out looking for a nice watering hole... the place we ended up at was the Sawai Madhopur Lodge, a lovely property currently leased out and run by the Taj group. As we sipped our drinks, someone spotted some movement in the darkened lawn behind me... what could this be...??!! Turned out it was just a common Indian hare, nibbling away at the juicy green grass


Sitting out in the veranda of Sawai Madhopur Lodge - they have some lovely old hunting trophies inside.

Next morning found us up at 05:30am, sipping tea and munching on buttered toast (the only thing the RTDC fellows would serve that early in the morning)... All excited, we were ready well before our designated pick-up time (06:30am) and whiled away the minutes chatting in the garden. As the sky lightened, we could make out the shapes of an entire troop of sleeping Langur monkeys in the trees surrounding the hotel. Our ride arrived, just as the monkeys were slowly awakening. After picking us up, the mini-bus skipped from hotel to hotel, picking up other passengers... with our driver making good time on the paved roads, the wind chill began to have it's effect and everyone quickly stuck their hands into their pockets and either pulled their hats as low as they could go, or those who had taken the trouble to wear something with a warm hood rapidly pulled it over their heads. On the bus we (as is so common in India) had a good smattering of people with 'monkey caps', and while their headgear was quite practical in terms of keeping them warm - it also served another (more important) end - that of offering us an easy object on which to crack cheap jokes... providing merriment to the onlooker and comfort to the owner...


Rose ringed parakeets - common all over India and the first 'wildlife' we spotted


Ranthambhore fort - as viewed from the entry to 'Zone 3', which was our designated circuit for the morning safari.


Cheetal (spotted deer) - saw our first ones soon after entering the park. These seemed to be quite plentiful and we stopped taking their pictures after a while.


A banyan tree forming a pretty neat looking arched gateway over the jeep track


A pair of spotted owls


A pair of juvenile male Nilgai - their coat will darken to a bluish-grey as they mature.


A dry riverbed, along which we spotted a huge (for it's species) mongoose feasting on the remains of a dead striped hyena. He scooted as soon as he saw us, and my friend (who was the one taking pictures) while trying to click the mongoose, completely skipped taking a picture of the hyena! Would have made an excellent (albeit macabre) 'what's this?' post...


A vulture - they used to be plentiful even 20 years back, but hardly get to see these in India any more...


A pair of bluebulls - female (standing & checking us out) and male (chilling out in the shade)


Indian tree pie - this is the only bird our designated guide could identify properly and so he never missed an opportunity to point one out!

All this while, we were getting quite irritated with some of our companions who'd brought their ill-behaved brats along... one was wailing to kingdom come, at some imagined slight (by her sibling) and another pair insisted on shouting the minute an animal was spotted! All requests by our guide to "please keep the shout down" and "please quite" seemed to be falling on deaf ears! As the trip wore on, we could see our chances of spotting a tiger slipping away... and then we had a busload of kids on a school trip pass us... and we silently thanked our stars for our "quite" companions


A Sambhar stag crosses the road


Sambhar deer at one of the many small streams that dot the park


A stag checks us out


So this was what he was getting all protective about!


A crocodile basking in the morning sun - we saw this chap on the way out...


The park has many such check dams all over the place - some clearly ancient (like this one at the entry) and some recently constructed ones.

Needless to say, we never saw a tiger on this morning safari! More on the evening safari and what we saw when I get back from dinner

Cheers!
Abhijeet

Very nice pictures Abhijeet. It must've been a nice experience, spending all that time in the wild with nothing but nature's musical voices to listen to.

Hey nice place aint it
We went there last year; On Enfeild's (i borrowed my ex-bosses bike)

nostalgic it is to see your pics

though when we went there we saw a tiger (probably lucky us) and it just happened so that i was changing the reel in my camera so had to click it with a phone you'll have to zoom a little to see it
we did the whole trip from Noida to Ranthambore and back in 2 days(actually 5 for the next 3 days for me were on a cushion )

miss those days when we use to make plans at night and be up up and away in the morning

Cheers
Sid

Abhijeet ,

These were beautiful pictures . Must have been a great expierence.


Sid,
Not bad considering you managed to get the tigers picture on ur phone. Gud job

AC

We got back to the hotel rather disappointed at not having seen any of the predator species (sloth bear, leopard, tiger, hyena, jackal) native to Ranthambhore. So while the plan was to leave for Jaipur after the morning safari, we decided we'd try our luck one more time and stay for the afternoon/ evening safari. Another desperate attempt was made to secure ourselves a gypsy for this trip, thus freeing us from the tyranny of oddball companions on the mini-bus, but the answer was still a firm NO! So a mini-bus it would be... again! 3 spots were booked for the afternoon and we were told to be ready for pick up from the hotel at 2-2:30pm. It was just past 11:00am and my friend (who is a conservation architect by profession) expressed his desire to check out the fort up close and take some snaps.


Crocodile spotted on the way to the fort, very close to where we saw one earlier in the day...


The sign put up by ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) outside the fort, offering a brief (although grammatically incorrect) history of the fort.


Another sign a little further off... thought y'all might find this one amusing


Lake within the national park - as seen from the ramparts of the fort


Pilgrims on their way up to the fort - the fort enclosure houses many temples and mosques, of which the Ganesha temple seems to have a great following amongst the locals. This however does not seem to stop them from scratching/ painting graffiti all over the place! We caught a couple of chaps in the act as well, whom my friend was quite ready to thrash right there and then, but finally was persuaded to let off with a warning...

Time passed quickly with my friend happily clicking pictures and marvelling at how several buildings in the fort stood the accepted architectural history (of India) on it's head... by the time we checked our watches it was almost time for the pick up, and we quickly rushed down to our car and headed back to the pick-up point...

As we got on the safari bus, it seemed like we'd been shoehorned into a group of elderly French tourists and their translator. We were quite pleased and thought this would be a definite improvement over our 'young' companions of that morning...

Our guide too seemed like a decent gent, though his choice of phrases did remind me of the guide we had that morning, maybe it's just professional slang After the usual warnings - no flash photography, no shouting, no smoking, etc. - we were off! This time we'd gotten allocated to 'zone 1', which sounded promising at the outset - but then our guide saw the allocated zone and made a morose expression before telling us that while the herbivores were 'common species' and could be spotted all over the park, the carnivores (bear, leopard, tiger, hyena, jackal) were 'rare species' and we should count ourselves lucky to spot one... This did dampen our spirits somewhat, and we sank even lower after 10 minutes of traversing 'zone 1', which was very thickly wooded - it seemed like our chances of spotting a tiger here were slimmer than they'd been that morning (zone 3 was more 'open country').

We saw the usual bluebull, sambhar & spotted deer - our companions seemed oblivious of the 'no flash photography' warnings and I was really getting irritated at all the flashbulbs going off at every animal we spotted! We also saw some parakeets and another pair of owls (I can't recall which type). We'd now reached the end of the road and it was time to retrace our steps... seemed like the chances of spotting a tiger were getting dimmer by the minute!


Female oriental honey-buzzard - we saw this soon after we turned back (sorry for the poor picture quality)

Then we spotted a sloth bear in the bushes! It was slowly moving out into the open, towards a dry stream bed... and then the infernal flash bulbs started popping again and I honest to god had to control my anger when I saw the startled bear move back into the bushes!!

I was still fuming when a gypsy ahead of us flagged our bus down. Our guide seemed to go into overdrive fawning over the occupants - must be forest rangers I thought... And then we saw it! A full grown male tiger - a truly majestic beast indeed!




I quickly prevented the people closest to me from letting off with their 'flash cannons' But the bus was large and the cameras many... The flash bulbs started popping, even as my neighbours gave me dirty looks for preventing them from indulging themselves... the tiger turned, looked at us and then walked into the undergrowth! Something tigers detest doing...

Wow! So we had our trophy at last! A tiger sighting, even if only a fleeting one


We climbed out of the bus at the park entrance (where our car was waiting to pick us up), when we saw a 'milk-van' with a uniquely Rajasthani flavour to it

On the drive back we were discussing our trip when we saw two elephants being 'transported' by road.




Cheers!
Abhijeet

Thank you Sharief! Though personally I'd have preferred to have been able to spend more days camped there... but that' just being plain 'ol greedy now, as this trip was in itself an unexpected bonus

AC & Sid - glad you enjoyed the pix

Cheers!
Abhijeet

What a superb safari you took us on Abhijeet!Many thanks for the great pics and the write up.Must have been great.A tiger in the wild is a magnificent spectacle.I am fortunate enough to have seen some.

Best-
Vikram

Thanks for the photographs and trip report.

Cheers

Nice read, Abhijeet.

Noisy tourists on a jungle safari is one of my pet hates as well.

In the second pic from the top (three of you having a drink on the verandah), who is the chap that is closest to the camera? He looks very familiar.

Lovely write up A and enjoyed reading it ,the pics of the croc & the cat stand out,nothing beats seeing a

Tiger in the wild,was fortunate to see it twice in Corbett.Thanks for sharing.

Sanjay

Mack The Knife Bana";p="32043 wrote:In the second pic from the top (three of you having a drink on the verandah), who is the chap that is closest to the camera? He looks very familiar.

That would be my sis-in-law's hubby... he's ex-MIT as well... you might have known him in college...

Cheers!
Abhijeet

Hi Big Gun,

Whenever you go quiet it means big surprises are in store . Thanks for the Tiger Safari you have given me the itch to take a look too.

Regards,

Dev

Thanks for the Tiger Safari you have given me the itch to take a look too.

Do go, you'll love it! Just don't make the mistake of last minute planning (like us ) - book in advance and make sure y'all secure gypsy's and don't under any circumstances get stuck on one of those 'canter mini-buses'

Cheers!
Abhijeet

Hey Abijeet,
Lovely photos and a great way to unwind.
The photo of the 'Milk van' is very creative.

Cheers

Vinayaka

Lovely pictures