It was pre-dawn. Erin was awake long before James – and made sure he eventually joined her. After some tepid showers, the entire group assembled at the main lodge, and made their way down to the two safari jeeps waiting at the Resort entrance. We pulled into the jeep waiting line at Bandhavgarh national park around 5:45 am, and one of our tour members from Wales noticed a small white dog pacing slowly up and down the line of jeeps. She asked Bhupendra (our tour guide) if the dog was blind; he then told us a story about how a woman some years past had noticed the same blind dog that lived at the gate, and sent 200 pounds to an NGO (Non-Governmental Organiztion) in India for its support. A woman at the NGO then contacted Bhupendra about the dog, and she suggested that she might take a trip to visit it – in first-class, thus using up the money allotted for the dog’s care. Her plans were thwarted, and the dog is in good health – aside from the blindness, and if compared to general Indian dog health.
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| Our safari jeep, with some bundled-up tourists packed up to go. |
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| The blind wildlife park dog. |
The gates went up, and we were off. Unlike Kanha national park, where any jeep can drive on any vehicle path anywhere in the park, Bandhavgargh uses a system of four paths – A, B, C and D. A driver is assigned two of the four paths, and during one excursion – either morning or afternoon – the driver must stay on those two paths. Our driver was assigned paths A and B, and soon after we entered the park, we had our first tiger sighting on path A:
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| We finally saw a tiger that took a good photo for the blog! |
This was very exciting for all of the jeeps in attendance. And, we were particularly lucky. At first, we had been the last jeep to arrive at the tiger sighting – and at the back of the line, it was difficult to see anything. But the tiger had other ideas, and backtracked parallel to the line of jeeps, crossing over the road and back again immediately in front of our jeep – as we were the last in line, we suddenly became first. The tiger then returned to a position parallel to the middle of our group – and met up with a second tiger, giving us two tiger sightings very early in the day. Because of the early hour, it was difficult to take clear pictures, but these examples should give some idea of the tigers we saw:
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| Catch a tiger crossing the road - this was about 30 feet away from us. |
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| Two tigers teasing the tourists. (sorry...) |
This was very exciting for all of the jeeps in attendance. And, we were particularly lucky. At first, we had been the last jeep to arrive at the tiger sighting – and at the back of the line, it was difficult to see anything. But the tiger had other ideas, and backtracked parallel to the line of jeeps, crossing over the road and back again immediately in front of our jeep – as we were the last in line, we suddenly became first. The tiger then returned to a position parallel to the middle of our group – and met up with a second tiger, giving us two tiger sightings very early in the day. Because of the early hour, it was difficult to take clear pictures, but these examples should give some idea of the tigers we saw:
After the tiger sightings, the excitement in the morning safari cooled off a bit as the heat grew. We saw far less birds in Bandhavgarh than we had in Kanha, but our bird-enthusiasts Stuart and Sandra still checked off a couple new examples. We saw lots and lots of deer – our Michigan hunter friends would (or will) be very jealous:
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| Are any hunter friends in Michigan jealous? |
We finished our morning session after a brief stop for breakfast in the camp, where we enjoyed the now-ubiquitous bananas and hard-boiled eggs, along with cheese sandwiches, boxed juice, and the traditional stuffed pakora bread – a bread made almost like a potato pancake, with onions and other vegetables stuffed inside the thin slices.
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| Erin poses before the breakfast "holding pen" at the camp. |
We were dropped back off at the hotel, and instead of having a buffet lunch, we decided to walk and explore the neighborhood. The lack of constant walking – here, unlike Europe, we end up riding to most locations – has been difficult for both of us. Erin left first, walking from the resort down to the main street we took to the safari in the morning. When she returned, we both walked the opposite direction, visiting (or walking nearby) a local village school and past some very rural homes on subsistence farms. We were clearly novel visitors to these parts, and were even followed by some children as we walked along:
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| Some of the Indian schoolchildren we saw on our walk, wearing the national Indian school uniform. |
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| A rural mustard seed farm, replete with a team of oxen. |
After that brief walk, Erin retired to our room and James continued on along – walking far down one road through several very small villages. He saw some very interesting examples of different farms, with one home growing melons on their roof, and another employing a hand-driven windmill to separate wheat from chaff. James greeted each person he saw with a “Namaste” – and while some laughed, it still seemed better to be polite rather than otherwise.
Our afternoon session started up around 3pm, so we were back in the jeeps at 2:30. The afternoon started off slower than the morning, but our route had changed to A and C – so there was some novelty built into our second Bandhavgarh safari. Our driver and guide took us to the Bandhavgarh caves, which once housed prehistoric men, and later soldiers. Today, they house bats, and James (and Erin, somewhat) braved the now-cemented caves to capture some of the bats in flight:
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| James takes a closer look at - tigers? - in the distance. |
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| Notice the large number of bats on the ceiling... |
The next stop after the caves was another tiger sighting – this one was in a meadow, where we finally saw one of the tigers run after prey. While we were unable to come away with video of the tiger running, we can safely say it was one of the most impressive sights we’ve seen thus far in India. These tigers are enormous, and the speed they can generate is nothing short of terrifying. That was the last tiger sighting we had in Bandhavgargh, but it did leave us four-for-four for safaris and tiger-sightings. Many tourists are not so lucky, as this sign at the exit from Bandhavgargh indicates:
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| A fitting end to the park - luckily, we had seen tigers, and lived to blog about it. |
In addition to the tiger, we also saw a common King Cobra snake – again, it escaped too quickly for a real picture. We watched a Jackal lope its way down the path, and saw a large amount of bucks among the spotted deer herds. There were some wild boar as well, and some – but not a lot – of beautiful birds.
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| Wild boar crossing the road. |
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| One of the beautiful vistas that surrounds the park. |
The safari ended around 5:30 pm, and at that point, driving in the open jeep around the park by the light of the moon – well, it was cold. We were thrilled to start our way home, and Erin had an even better surprise – when we stopped at a random road-side store for drinks to take back to the resort, they happened to have cans of Diet Coke – the first we had seen in days. Our dinner was the same – a buffet of Indian curries, rice, some papadam bread and pita, and a desert selection – but it was filling, and hit the spot after a skipped-lunch day. After dinner, James taught the four Danes how to play Euchre, and we got to bed early in anticipation for a dawn drive to our next stop Kajuraho.
