Monday 28 Oct 2013 Ranthambhore National Park

Our day started early again, with a 5:30am wake-up call, followed by tea and coffee in the foyer as we waited for our car and guide for our first of our two Park Safaris today, we’re on Safari for Tigers.

The Ranthambhore National Park is about a 10 minute drive from out hotel. The Park is about 1400 sq km in area and is divided into 9 zones (roughly according to tiger numbers). There are 40+ tigers in the park, along with foxes, sloth, antelopes, deer, crocodiles, mongoose, leopards, caravels, snakes and a vast array of birdlife.

The road within the park is heavily effected by the monsoons and is presently under reconstruction to repair water/flooding damage. The weather here during the summer monsoons is so wet that they have to close to park for a few months. So they are VERY bumpy and dusty.

Our assigned sector for the morning is No.2. The National Parks people control the number of cars going into the park and where they may go. The first animals we saw were monkeys, the Common Langur Monkey, they are prolific around the park entrance, climbing over buildings, sitting on walls and hanging in the trees beside and over the road. Throughout the rest of the park the most prolific animals are peacocks, they seem to be everywhere!

Once into the park we stopped by a watercourse and saw a beautiful red crested woodpecker (It made Deb immediately think of John and Georgiana in the USA, they hate them over there for all the damage they do), but in the forest here they were wonderful, so colourful. There were also kingfishers and Shrines. We saw a wild bore on the road, it looked very disoriented or scared, I thought it might have meant a tiger was close, but no, it was just a demented bore!

Now the thrill of the “hunt” began, our guide was on a mission to find us a Tiger. He was asking every tour car that we crossed and finally one said they had seen a Tiger sitting in some low grass a way down the track. So off we went at a fast pace, bouncing along the road until he picked the spot and within seconds we had a view of a distant Tiger (about 200m away).  We took lots of pictures just in case this was the only tiger we saw while we were here, but we knew that shots over a distance weren’t going to be too good here due to the haze in the air. Our guide said that the tiger would be on the move soon, as the day was warming up and they don’t stay still for long. Sure enough it was soon up, and after “spraying” the area leapt into action towards what our guide said was a herd of deer. You could hear the deer giving out warning screams. We lost sight of the tiger in the scrub, so we cruised along the road for a while and waited for more alarm noises from the deer. We could hear them alarmed a bit further down the road so we headed off, and then our guide made the driver take us to a known trail that the tigers use, and sure enough there was our beast, a large female tiger with a deer in its jaws. We drove to within 10m of it and watched as it effortlessly picked up its catch and took it into the bush for a leasurely meal. We got some great action shots here and then moved again to try and get a better look at it feasting. Our view was shielded by the long grass it was in, but you could hear it, tearing at the carcus and crunching on the bones as it fed. An amazing experience, apparently only 20% of visitors to the park ever see a tiger, and we saw one on our first of 5 safaris, how lucky we felt. It was then time to go back for a well earned breakfast and our next Safari at 3pm.

Our second safari was in Zone No.3, and while we didn’t get any tiger action this time out we did see some amazing wildlife. We saw many deer and antelope, an amazing number of different birds, most of which we have never seen or heard of before. We saw crocodile in Lake Rajbag, along with Black Wing Stilled, Heron  and even a large turtle that was seemingly sunbaking next to the waters edge. It was facinating watching it as it seemed to watch us, telescoping its head almost into its shell and the back out to the full length of its neck, it had the most amazing eyes, and Deb commented on the fact it had nostrils. The forest here is made  up of about 80% Dhock trees, which are deciduous, and the deer love to eat them. We finished up calling it a day a little early, but were very happy with our day in the park, and we got some great photos.