“I will show you a tiger,” promised Vijayan, a reformed poacher. He was a part of the five-man team (all ex poachers) assigned to guide me through Periyar Tiger Reserve. Two forest guards armed with a rifle also accompanied us. It was the first of our three-day tiger safari and we were entering the heart of the jungle.
I wondered how Vijayan could be so certain. Wildlife spotting, much like a keenly contested game of poker, is after all a matter of luck. No amount of money, skill or influence can guarantee a tiger sighting. And it is perhaps this lack of assurance, added to the thrill of seeing ferocious creatures stalk majestically, unfearful of man and beast, that leads the wildlife tourist year after year to sanctuaries and reserved forests. And once sighted, wildlife tourism becomes what Plato describes as ‘that dear delight’.
Fortune is a crucial element in this sport, and I had so far been endowed with remarkable luck. I had never come back from a sanctuary without significant sightings. In fact, when we encountered two leopard cubs on the highway leading to Joshimath, my friends rephrased an old adage for me - “unlucky in love, lucky with wildlife”. Perhaps Vijayan had factored my providence when he promised the tiger sighting.
But the first day was disappointing. After a tedious walk through the jungle, all I had to write home about were barking deer, hordes of wild boars, a huge python sleeping after a meal, bisons and other creatures classified as prey. The prey abounds everywhere but wildlife tourism is all about predator sightings. And my personal quest was the tiger.
At tea break, as we were perched on a cliff overlooking Periyar Lake, one of the guides suddenly got all excited and pointing south, frantically instructed us to duck behind the rocks. On the other side of the lake a pack of wild dogs (also known as dhole) were chasing a herd of deer. In a matter of minutes, the pack had selected its target – a year-old baby deer. The sequence was nothing short of high-end drama telecast in wildlife channels. The dogs were trying to isolate its prey while the mother moved closer in a bid to steer her baby out of danger. But the deer was no match for the wily dogs. The pack had divided itself into two. One group cornered the baby deer to the edge of the lake while the other pushed the mother in another direction.
It was a cruel and disturbing moment when the dogs pounced upon the young one as the mother stood helplessly a mere thirty metres away.
The drama over, we proceeded back to base camp which was on the same side of the lake where the kill had occurred. The night was chilly. We lit a bonfire and tried to get comfortable with the jungle.
The jungle, in the nights, gathers an unbridled energy. The atmosphere is loaded and you know living beings lurk beyond the silence. Predators, with their nocturnal vision, lord over the land. The stillness is only broken by animal sounds and alarm calls, an odd rustle in the ground and the sound of dry leaves being trampled upon. It’s an eerie feeling and one has the distinct sensation of being watched. There is a sense of excitement and wild beauty.
Early next day we trekked to Palkachi, the second tallest peak of the region. The hills and valleys of Periyar, unlike the Central Indian forests, are covered with mixed deciduous forests, generously touched by evergreen trees and interspersed by grasslands. The equatorial sky, strikingly blue and smattered with silver clouds, filled me with a romantic cheer. No tigers were encountered on the way but the trek was beautiful and the panoramic view from Palkachi mesmerized my frayed nerves, a souvenir from my high-pressure profession.
Soon it was evening and we were once again around the campfire. It was our last night in the jungle. A guide was recounting his experiences of the wild, when an elephant ventured close to our camp. It was trying to proceed ahead, but the trench covered a wide distance and was blocking its path. Uncertain, and not knowing how to cross the camp, it let out a huge trumpet, sending a chill down my spine. Guessing my anxiety, one of the guards assured me that the trench surrounding us was so deep that no animal could cross it. “Also, fire scares animals away,” he informed with a conviction that I refused to share.
Jungle retreats all over the world are ensconced within electrified meshes. Trenches, however deep, offer the most primitive form of protection. While Periyar is low on tiger and leopard count, it has a sizeable bear population and is known as the de facto elephant country.
Tentatively, a few more elephants moved in from the darkness to explore the roadblock. And within a space of fifteen minutes, the count had swelled to over thirty. As the numbers grew, the tentativeness gave way to nervous shuffling and unruly jostling, with a few of the herd resorting to full throttled trumpets.
The rowdy behaviour of the herd was terrifying. With each passing minute, they were getting more belligerent and violent. The din was unbearable, filling the night with aggressive anxiety. A herd of elephants is the most destructive force in a forest, and can clear tree patches within minutes. The only question was whether our trench was big enough to withstand this disgruntled herd.
One of the guards explained that the trench was along the herd’s migratory route, and this was the reason of their annoyance. By now the guards were on full alert and were feeding the fire in a bid to scare the elephants away. But they wouldn’t budge. The fifteen feet wide and ten feet deep trench, protecting us from the elephants, suddenly did not feel so formidable. Shedding all pretensions of gallantry, we retreated. There was very little that we could do. We were just eight of us in the middle of a jungle with one rifle and over thirty elephants loomed large on us.
Fortune however sometimes also favours the meek. After creating a ruckus for about two hours, the elephants sidetracked our camp and advanced. The ravaged silence of the aftermath continues to deafen my ears on lonely nights. So what if Periyar was a no show as far as the tiger was concerned, I had had enough excitement for one lifetime.
Prior to Periyar, I had spent two days at Ranthambore Tiger Reserve which completely failed to live up to its reputation. I found the wildlife sanctuary to be overhyped and the rules laid down by the authorities rigid to a fault. The vehicles have to strictly adhere to the route (they refuse to budge even a few metres off track for a photograph and you can beg and plead all you please). In other tiger reserves like Bandhavgarh and Kanha the driver and guide are free to switch tracks and race towards the source of the alarm calls for a tiger sighting.
Compared to Ranthambore, Periyar was a like a breath of fresh air. Despite the low tiger count there, I had fancied my chances upon spotting one, purely because we were trekking right through the jungle for almost three full days. Trekking renders you a freedom to diverge from the path and follow your instincts. Moreover, the reformed poachers now turned into guides, not only possessed a remarkable knowledge of the forest, but also an uncanny knack for locating the tiger by being ever alert to the warning cries of monkeys and deer, and to the majestic cat’s distinctive excreta, pug marks on the ground and claw marks on tree trunks.
My next stop was Madhya Pradesh, which holds about one sixth of the world’s tigers. Every tiger enthusiast’s dream gets fulfilled at Kanha Tiger Reserve and Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve.
Kanha is billed as ‘Kipling Country’, as Rudyard Kipling was inspired to write his famous Jungle Book after visiting the forest, while Bandhavgarh is popular as white tiger country besides having the highest density of tiger population in India.
Half an hour into my very first safari at Kanha, some French tourists coming in a jeep from the opposite direction stopped us. Gesticulating excitedly, in broken English they told us about seeing a tiger on a kill some distance away. The guide in our vehicle immediately took the route suggested by them. At a distance I could see vultures on the trees, a sure sign of the kill.
Because of the rough terrain, it took us about five minutes to reach the spot. But five minutes is a long time for a tiger with the kill. There were clear wet footprints leading from the spot, cutting across the dirt track and the grass was still parted defining the path of the tiger as it had melted into the forest. As I gazed long and hard at the footprints, our driver informed us that our near-miss was a male of around eight years.
Disappointed beyond measure, I looked around in frantic desperation when something caught my eye. Just beyond the fringe of the tall grass, was the carcass of a half eaten chital, very obviously abandoned in a hurry.
I felt sorry for this beautiful animal but this is the law of the jungle. The prey has to run faster than the predator, and the predator has to run faster than the prey to survive.
Kanha almost yielded two tiger sightings. Unfortunately, that is what it was – almost and my hopes now rested on Bandhavgarh, with the highest tiger density in the country. Home to 22 species of wildlife, including the regal 'gaur', innumerable varieties of deer and carnivores such as the striped hyena, jungle cat and sloth bear and over 250 species of birds, Bandhavgarh had been the private hunting ground of the Maharaja of Rewa till as late as 1960.
The morning and evening safari of the first day was a total washout. There was not a trace of the tiger. With just one more day left, before we were homeward bound, my hopes had nose-dived. Tigerless at Periyar, Kanha and Ranthambore, I no longer fancied my chances at Bandhavgarh.
We embarked on the first safari of our final day in the wee hours of the winter morning. After two hours of crisscrossing the forest, our driver suddenly stopped the gypsy and pointed to the edge of the dirt track. There were three distinct sets (one large, two smaller) of pugmarks. The guide informed us that a female and her two cubs had passed by a short while ago and in all probability were headed towards a large pond, a place called Gopalpur.
Barely a kilometer from the point of spotting the pugmarks, our driver came to an abrupt halt behind another jeep. On our right 200 metres off the road, under a tree, were two tiger cubs. Though not in the same league as seeing a full-grown tiger, the cubs, not more than year-and-a-half, were nevertheless a majestic sight.
The jeep would not go closer to the cubs but luckily for us, there was mahout Kuttapan and his charge Siddharth, nearby to provide us a Tiger Show, where you are taken as close as possible to the tiger on elephant back. We got about 50 feet from the duo and for a good 20 minutes sat enthralled as they lolled in the grass, clawed the bark of the tree and played with each other. It was as if they were oblivious of our presence, lost in their own world.
My next visit to a Tiger Reserve Forest came six months later through an invitation from a friend who had opened a Jungle Lodge called Tiger Trails in the periphery of the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve. Painted in white, the lodge stood out prominently in the landscape. The only concrete structure in the vicinity, Tiger Trails is surrounded by flat land on two sides with hills and the jungle stretching out in front. Pin drop silence hangs around the lodge, broken only by animal calls and the chirping of birds.
Ironically, the opening line of Amrut Dhanwatey, our host for the next three days was, “I will show you a tiger.” May, he said, is the best month to spot a tiger. I was clearly skeptical, both of promises and my own run of luck. Moreover, Tadoba did not even feature prominently in India’s tiger map.
As we set out on the second safari of the day, Amrut informed us that tigers, like other wild animals, congregate at watering holes to beat the summer heat. “With a little bit of patience you are sure to spot one," he reiterated. It was hot for certain. Sitting in the open jeep, the harsh afternoon sun fell directly upon us. Unlike Mumbai, Central India is parched and dry. Hot air hits you like a blast of furnace. Amrut tried to keep our spirits high with tiger anecdotes as we crisscrossed between watering holes.
At about five, while we were taking a short respite from the heat beside a watchtower close to a lake, a forest guard with a walkie-talkie excitedly came running to us. “Proceed towards Pandharpauni water hole road. A tiger has been spotted there,” he shouted. Immediately, we jumped into our four-wheel drive and put the vehicle on full throttle.
At the very spot informed by the guard, sprawled on the dirt track, next to a bamboo grove, lay a full-grown tigress in complete majesty, oblivious and uncaring to the excitement and panicky adjustment of the camera lens that surrounded her. She lay still for about ten minutes, then got up with a drawl and walked on the dirt track towards, what the locals called, Kolar Tank 97.
By this time, word had spread that a tiger has been sighted and as many as seven vehicles (a collection of Sumos, Qualises, Marutis and Santros) were following her. It was almost like a ‘baarat’ with the unruffled and not so coy bride leading the way.
The languid unconcern would have been anti-climax in any other animal, but the tiger excites by its mere presence and majesty. We followed her for nearly half an hour, long after others had taken 'one for the album' and a U-turn. Her movements seemed like poetry in motion and she was a real beauty, her stripes gleaming in the sunlight. The disappointments in Periyar, Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Ranthambore did not seem to matter now. We were just 20 feet away from the beast and I understood what they meant by feline grace.
