For the last few days I’ve been at Ranthambhore National Park, in the Rajasthan region of India.
The park is part of the Project Tiger program, and is where you are most likely to spot a tiger on safari in India. Apparently some of the parks in the country, some even with “tiger” in their name, have experienced such extensive tiger poaching that they have none left at all. At Ranthambhore there are currently 36 tigers, spread out over 1334 sq km.
The park is gorgeous, with dramatic ravines, rocky cliffs, wild jungle, lakes and rivers, occasionally dotted with crumbling ruins.
A massive fort sits on top of a bluff, standing sentinel over the massive park. In addition to tigers, the park also has caracal, leopards, jungle cats, hyenas, foxes, jackals, sloth bears, spotted deer, sambar deer, Indian gazelles, bluebulls, crocodiles and 300 species of birds.
I was fortunate enough to have tiger sightings on two of my three safaris.
On my first day, I saw two 8-month-old tiger cubs (which are much bigger than the cuddly, hold-in-your-lap size I had imagined), who were lurking in the grass while their mom was off on a kill. It was fantastic to see them in the wild, and I was amazed at how well they blend in with the grass. I did manage to capture one with my camera, though from quite a distance.
My second sighting was on my third safari, when we saw an adult female lazing around in the shade of a tree. It was a better sighting than my first in that we were able to watch her for about 20 minutes, and got to see her stretch, roll around on her back, and bat the air with her massive paws. The down side was that we were watching through several bushes, so it was impossible to get any photos of her.
Almost as interesting as seeing the tigers was watching the vehicles jockeying for the best views. When a tiger is spotted, word somehow spreads through the park like wildfire, and all the jeeps and canters in the area rush to get a peek.
(A limited number of vehicles are allowed into each of the parks five sections at a time.) Thankfully, the tigers are used to the vehicles (which must remain on the dirt road), so they don’t pay any attention to the excitement their presence generates.
Other animals I spotted during my three safaris include monkeys, spotted deer, sambar deer, peacocks, baby crocodiles, bluebulls, birds and an owl.
All of the animals were quite docile, except for one monkey that we saw at the end of my second safari.
We stopped at a security gate on our way out of the park, where a large black-faced monkey was sitting nearby. He seemed mildly curious about us, when suddenly he leapt onto the jeep, lunged at a three-year-old girl, and reached down into the bottom of the jeep for a bag of snacks sitting below her.
I have no idea how he knew the snacks were there, and the whole thing happened so fast we had no time to react, but afterward the park staff did managed to get most of the snacks back, and even made the monkey do a couple tricks in exchange for an orange. Needless to say, the girl was quite traumatized, and afterward for several minutes all I heard from her was upset-sounding Hindi, occasionally dotted with “monkey!” in a sniffly voice. Thankfully no one was hurt, and I laughed when later that day I heard the story from another traveler – apparently word gets around outside the park too.