We arrived in the tiny little town,Tala, positioned right outside the main gate for the National Park. We went straight to the LP recommended budget option and checked into a small one room semi-detached house which was well insulated against any kind of heat. No glass in the windows and concrete metres thick, it was cold enough during the day but at night it was almost unbearable.
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| From Bandhavgarh, India |
The Argentinian couple we bumped into at Ajanta said that they had turned up early in the morning joined another Jeep, so that was what we planned to do as well. We spent the afternoon wandering about and talking to another traveller, Chris. The next morning before 6am the three of us headed out to start working the queuing Jeeps, after fifteen minutes Chris gave up and we joined him not long after. The people who didn't mind if we joined were part of lodge tours and the paperwork was almost impossible to arrange last minute and the others either didn't want us, didn't have enough room in the Jeep or were photographers and needed all the space they had. We left feeling more than a little dejected and a bit cheesed off that the couple hadn't hinted that it might be difficult, so we made our way back to the hotel full of biscuits that we'd optimistically bought thinking we wouldn't be eating until mid-morning.
Later that morning two older American ladies showed up looking for other people to fill out a Jeep, so we put all our details together and planned to book a private Jeep if we got on the list. The system is complicated and annoying, the park is big and has several entry points into different zones, the best place to see tigers is from the main gate in zone one which has a long waiting list because the numbers of Jeeps allowed inside the park are limited. While we were talking about the system and what we'd tried another guy arrived, Flor from Holland, and he joined up with us and we went down to the entry gate to see if there had been any cancellations and beg for a place. Luckily for us, one of the American ladies took charge and went to talk to the man in charge with Djalma, between them they wangled us a place for the following morning, ecstatic, we walked back to relax and enjoy the rest of the afternoon and eat lunch. By the time we got back an English couple had checked in Dave and Genna and so we sat out talking and drinking a couple of beers into the evening before rolling into bed early for our guaranteed early start the next day.
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| From Bandhavgarh, India |
Up at 5.30am brimming with excitement we didn't need to put our clothes on, it was so cold at night we slept in them. The American ladies turned up early with the Jeep to pick us up so we could beat the queues. The guys guarding the gate came round to check our group leaders papers and at 6.30 sharp the gates were opened and we and thirty odd other Jeeps drove in full of anticipation although a tiger sighting was guaranteed of course. It was just starting to get light when we went through the gates, still too dark for pictures but the park was beautiful, we saw loads of monkeys the funniest ones were on our way out and were sitting by the road like old men scratching their furry rear ends.
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| From Bandhavgarh, India |
We saw plenty of spotted deer which we didn't know to take as a good sign or a bad sign – would the tigers be close to dinner or where they here because it was safe, after a few stops to take pictures we were soon racing past them to find other animals.
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| From Bandhavgarh, India |
It was the first time I had seen green pigeons, we only saw them because a Jeep had stopped below and some keen amateur photographers with massive lenses were frantically snapping away at the little green specks.
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| From Bandhavgarh, India |
Carrying on we saw a huge eagle but our guides English wasn't good enough to translate the actual species,either that or he didn't actually know.
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| From Bandhavgarh, India |
Our special spotting was a black sloth bear which was rummaging around behind some bamboo he was completely unaware of us until seven other Jeeps showed up and the poor beast ran off. We were all taken by how cute it was but we didn't realise how rare (or dangerous) they were until one of the professional photographers said how lucky we were to see it and how he would prefer his chances with a tiger rather than a bear.
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| From Bandhavgarh, India |
So we drove on trying to convince ourselves that we were happy having seen what we'd seen and partially succeeding, it was a gorgeous morning and the chill in the air was letting up so our fingers clamped round our cameras were beginning to defrost, half way round the reserve we stopped for hot masala tea, to stretch our legs and if we were really desperate, and I was, use the open urinals.
After our fifteen minute break was over we were keen to jump back in the car and carry on hoping for a sighting of the mother and her two cubs which had been reported. It didn't happen. We passed another car got some information and headed off in a completely different direction. After half an hour we came to a long queue where people were sitting quietly and waiting in their cars after five or ten minutes a hush descended and people started pointing to something moving in the thicket of bamboo.
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| From Bandhavgarh, India |
A TIGER! I was worried that we were so far at the end of the queue that we wouldn't see it but she came right out by OUR Jeep and walked behind it, crossing the road to disappear into the bamboo the other side. Djalma filmed, I photographed and everyone was excited beyond belief. It was an incredible feeling to see a beautiful creature so powerful that close, my knees were shaking rather hard and I sat down as soon as the tiger disappeared. All of us started speaking about how exciting it was, how shaky we were (maybe it was just me) and how cool it was that we'd seen a tiger on our first trip.
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| From Bandhavgarh, India |
We were all thrilled but the excitement got too much for poor Flor who was in the front seat trying not to give into the awful urge of public excrement that diarrhoea incites, the poor guy had managed to hold on all morning and now that we had seen the tiger he was done in. Our driver left the two ladies, who'd gone on an elephant ride and unbeknown to us were busy tracking it and having the time of their lives, and drove us crazily fast to the exit which thankfully wasn't too far away.
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| From Bandhavgarh, India |
We waited by the Jeep for the ladies to arrive, which they eventually did breathless with the thrill of the chase, and we walked back to the little town together. It was an unbelievable morning and we needed to some food to take the shakes off, so we had lunch and then made plans for beers and a bonfire that night.
We sat out most of the afternoon, all evening and into the morning talking and drinking, it was one of the best nights I've had so far not least because of the Indian whisky with 'thumbs up' cola to round it off.
At around 2am we gave up trying to train the mongrel dogs who were starved of affection and went to bed.
Djalma and I left the next morning, we had managed to negotiate a decently priced three hour car ride into a big town where we could get a bus the rest of the way to Varanasi, we shared it with another Latin American couple who were also headed the same way.
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