Here Puss, Puss...............
Trip Start
Apr 25, 2010
1
6
49
Trip End
Mar 30, 2011
Ranthambore National Park, Rajasthan, India
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
I had made it to the Ranthambore national park, home to animals of all kinds and colours but I was only interested in spotting the tigers.
Up until this point I had managed to see palaces, forts, lakes and the like-all of which are very impressive but the possibility of seeing a tiger in the wild held much more of an attraction. All that had to be done was arrange my tour and get out and spot the big cat.
That itself was actually harder than you may think; organising, arranging trips in India is not the simpliest of tasks as they seem to follow no particular rhyme or reason.
If anything it's more like organised chaos.
So, as I could not make an advanced booking, a 4.30 am rise time was necessary. It turns out that tigers are early risers apparently!!!
The tiger might be an early riser but I'm certainly not, so as I pulled myself from bed and lumbered half asleep towards the booking office I must have cut some sight for the little Indian guys!!
What hardships I need to go through eh????
Not to worry though, after signing my life away and promising that I understood the park has no responsibility for my death (always a comforting thing to sign!!) I was off into the park to spot some animals.
The excitement was starting to build, the anticipation of seeing a tiger in the wild was starting to take hold and thankfully I was starting to forget it was only 5 in the morning!!!
All of this was just fuelled by the 'eye of the tiger' running through my head, I'm sure I even burst into song at one point but as i sound like a cat being strangled when I sing-I soon stopped!!!
The day started well, there was plenty of paw prints to be seen-there were tigers out there but the were very elusive............so the guide kept telling me!
I did manage to spot other animals though- spotted deer, peacocks, monkeys, sambar(another type of deer, only found in India by all accounts). I'd never heard of them, hell I thought the guide kept calling them 'samba'-all I had in my head was an adidas trainer and the thought of why name a trainer after this boring animal????
I also seen aligators and even a mongoose. Well there was more than one but i'm not sure if that would be mongeese? or mongi???-Any thoughts????
Seeing these animals was fun, but a tiger was what I wanted to see and as the hours passed without seeing one it looked like it wouldn't happen.
In fact when the guide started to highlight birds(a wild fowl is no where near as exciting as you'd think) I knew it was getting bad!!
The morning was coming to an end, no tigers were seen and what started out with excitement and enthusiasm had been replaced with a dejected silence.......
Not one to be put off by failure(I find it's easier to quit just before it happens!!) I had a second day to try and spot the big pussy cat.
As another 4.30 start rolled around, the 'eye of the tiger' kicked in again and I was off. Day 2 was much the same as the first, strange as it might seem but once you've seen a peacock or spotted deer-you've seen them all!!! I wanted to see a tiger but it was not to be, I did spot a black bear though.
I think it was a baby black bear as it didn't look that big, well either that or it was really far away!!!
Ach well, no tigers to speak of but a good time was still had by all. It was time to go, I was heading to another of the things I really wanted to see
in India; the Taj Mahal.
