The Magic of Ranthambhore

How would you describe a trip that began without the tickets for the return journey in hand? And which ended with you jumping down from the train at the signal and making your way to the nearest platform across tracks, ditches, narrow planks and the like? Exciting, right? And THAT was how my recent trip to Ranthambhore National Park was – exciting, from start to finish!

Ranthambhore is a tiger reserve and one of the most easily accessible wildlife sanctuaries in India. A quick 20-minute drive from Sawai Madhopur railway station (a stop on most Mumbai-Delhi trains); the Reserve is an ideal weekend getaway if you want to do something different from the usual Matheran-Mahabaleshwar-Goa routine.

And that was what we did – took off for the weekend on Friday evening by the August Kranti Express (with no clue whether we would be returning on Tuesday morning or not!) and reached Sawai Madhopur bright and early at 6:30 AM on Saturday. Waiting for us was Deshbandhu Ji (yes, his name IS Deshbandhu!) an avid wildlife enthusiast and ace wildlife photographer. He is an extremely well-connected personage around Ranthambhore and our last-minute trip was successful largely due to his “setting”. :D Deshbandhu Ji picked us up at the station and dropped us off at the gate of the Park where the Jeep he’d arranged for our safari was waiting for us. (We didn’t even bother dropping off our stuff at the hotel, Deshbandhu Ji was going to arrange that!)

The Park timings are from 6:30 AM to 10:00 AM and 2:30 PM to 6:00 PM every day. In each slot, a fixed number of vehicles are allowed into the reserve, (25 Jeeps and 15 Canters), in fixed zones. The Park is divided into 5 zones and traffic in each zone is strictly regulated. A vehicle caught trespassing into a zone not allotted to it is heavily penalized.

Driving through the reserve in an open jeep in the early hours of the day is a delight. The feel of the forest- the heady scent of foliage, the chaos of bird sounds, the cool breeze, the soft grey sky seen through the gaps in the leaves – is indescribable. On top of that, the entrance to the park is through an ancient stone arch and some ruins, with tall cliffs on either side of the road (where vultures nest) – so one gets the feeling that one is stepping back in time. There is a sense of time being frozen within the magical forest of Ranthambhore.

I was with a group of avid birders (bird-watchers – birds of the avian variety, that is) – A, R, S, L and C. They were THE deal – complete with a scope-with-tripod (a telescope-like object for identifying birds at a great distance), bird-books, powerful binoculars (including a pair for the complete novice aka me) and an excellent camera in the hands of an excellent photographer – L. So for once, I could relax and take in the sights, secure in the knowledge that L would be doing everything humanly possible to get gorgeous wildlife snaps. (It’s another thing that the camera R had got for me was set on low-res, so the landscape pics I took were disappointingly postcard-sized!)

Though the entrance of the Park is amid greenery, about 70-80% of the tree cover is made up of Dhok trees – which are deciduous, i.e. they shed their leaves in early summer and luxuriate in fresh new foliage in the rains. So, in the heart of the park, you see bare, bare, bare trees with their twisted grey branches making a lattice against the blue sky from where the sun pours down its flood of sunshine – a mellow gold in mornings and a scorching bright white in the afternoons.

The road (nay, the path!) weaving through thickets of leafless trees constantly reminded me of the winter forests described in Grimm’s Fairy Tales – spidery, grey and bare as bones. Yet, there is a raw elemental beauty in the barren landscape – the a blindingly bright sky, slate/brown slopes of the hills covered with whispery grey scrub, swathes of brown trees from which the startlingly white Ghost tree stands out like the belle of the ball – it all is starkly beautiful. Even more beautiful is when the road dips into a valley which is ablaze with the orange flame-like flowers of the Palash tree – or the Flame of the Forest. Grey stone cliffs, blue sky, and vivid orange blooms together make a breathtakingly beautiful sight. The Great Painter paints such landscapes very rarely indeed! :)

Our first safari (we’d booked 5!) took us on a route in Zone 2 which was slightly easier on the eye with a fair bit of evergreen trees en route. The birders (and I!) saw more than 50 birds in this on safari alone! Later in the afternoon, for our second safari, we took a canter (12-seater open vehicle – a jeep seats 6 + the driver and a guide) along a path through Zone 3. Zone 3 has a series of lakes so the chances of seeing birds and wildlife are higher in this zone. We spotted migratory birds aplenty – Northern Shovellers, Painted Storks and others whose names I don’t remember. (Complete photo album at the link below) It was in this safari where we spotted a tiger – albeit at a great distance away and only the head/face. The tigers – it was a mating pair - were in a hollow in Zone 4 and we could spot only tantalizing glimpses of one of them – the male – through the scope. HOW we envied the tourists in Zone 4 who got a close-at-hand view of two tigers for nearly an hour!!

Here I must point out 2 things which are crucial to a successful safari - your guide and your vehicle. The guide you get is not your choice unfortunately, so if you are landed with a guide who doesn’t know about/doesn’t want to spend time and energy telling you about anything other than tigers, you will come back from a safari feeling deflated and disappointed if you don’t spot a tiger. And considering spotting a tiger requires great luck, you more often than not, can end up feeling that the safari was a wasted trip. So unless you’re with a group of expert wildlife watchers (like I was), the success of your safari greatly depends on the knowledge/interest of your guide in non-tiger matters. :)

Which brings us to the next point – the vehicle. If you have a small group (maximum six people) you can, and SHOULD, book a jeep. A jeep is almost always an exclusive vehicle only for your group – unless you choose to share it – and you can stop it whenever you want to – if you spot rare birds (dismissed as generic ‘chidiyaan’ by most tiger-crazy guides) or if you see a spectacular composition for a landscape photograph. A canter is generally shared between groups of people unlike the jeep, and because many people are not aware of jungle safari etiquette (no bright red/orange/yellow clothing, maintaining pin-drop silence etc) your safari starts resembling your last school picnic – complete with loud chatter, kids bawling in the background, an indifferent guide, and fellow-travellers who don’t care too much about seeing the landscape or any wildlife other than the tiger. Just one safari in a canter had us know that we NEEDED to get a jeep for the rest of the safaris.

But it is very difficult to get a jeep, unless: you book online months in advance; or have VIP access; or you are a Master wheedler – which R in our group was. Her woeful pleas about not getting to spot or identify ANY birds when in a canter, and how this trip was arranged after SUCH a lot of efforts, and how DISAPPOINTING it was to come so far with so much trouble PURELY for birding and then not get to see any birds - made jeeps available for us for the rest of the safaris. :D In all our 5 safaris combined, we spotted more than 100 birds, wildlife like chinkaras, spotted deer, Sambhar deer, jackals, a leopard and hundreds of startlingly beautiful peacocks. Not to mention some awe-inspiring scenery.

Safari No. 3 was the most memorable – not only because it was in a hard-won jeep, along scenic route 3 (again!) and in the hush of the morning – but because it was when we spotted the elusive tiger of Ranthambhore – at a distance of 4 feet! (Yes! Yes! Yes!) Sundari, or T-17 as she is better known, (all tigers in all reserves have numeric codes to identify them) is the boldest tiger in Ranthambhore. People gawking at her do not alarm or anger her – much. She HAS been known to snarl if too many people close in, but for the most part, she is bindhaas in the true sense of the word. Thanks to some quick thinking by our well-informed and enthusiastic guide and some excellent driving by our driver, we spotted T-17 not once, but thrice! The first time was at very close quarters – she was walking along in the dense undergrowth next to the path, not more than 4 feet away from me. All we could see was the orange coat and thick black stripes on her belly – till she walked out of the undergrowth and in front of our jeep.

SHE didn’t care that a jeep full of people with eyes-wide-open-with-excitement were watching (and photographing) her every step from the back, nor that there was a canter – yes, a CANTER full of people ahead of her, gawking away to glory. Not her, indeed! She gracefully walked on between the two vehicles, pausing only once to turn around and give us a regal look before walking off the path into the bush again. The other two times we spotted her at a greater distance – once when she sprawled out in the middle of the road (undoubtedly lazily lapping up the attention!) and the when she loped out into the open grassland by the lake – I have never seen a walk (human or animal!) as graceful and sinuous as Sundari’s by the lake. L has photographic (and video) evidence (reproduced below) of T-17’s beauty and elegance – and it’s no matter that he fell off (yes!) the jeep twice in his bid to get the best-possible snaps of this sinewy beauty.

Apparently, T-17’s mother T-16 was even more of a - for want of a better word – babe than T-17. Popularly known as Machhli (though THAT name was her mother’s by rights, on account of the fish-shaped marks on her face), she was also known as Lady of the Lakes and Crocodile Hunter. She remains the most-photographed tiger in the world. She kept her territory (the largest in Ranthambhore, for any tiger) free from any rampaging male. She would guard her territory with the utmost alertness and take a round along its borders every week – like clockwork. T-16 did what no tigress had done before - she single-handedly raised not 2, not 3 but 5 cubs (born in 2 separate litters in the same mating season). The gestation period of a tiger is 14 weeks and the cubs, once born are fully dependant on their mother till they are fully grown (2 years) – so, generally, a tigress with cubs doesn’t mate for the next 2 years. But T-16 did this impossible feat – to protect the elder two cubs from being killed by a male intent on mating. What’s more – she kept her 5 kids well-fed despite having lost 2 of her 4 canines (crucial for tearing flesh) to a long-drawn fight with a crocodile who dared steal her prey. Hence the moniker Crocodile Hunter. (Generally tigers and crocs steer clear of each other) What is remarkable is that after the 2 elder cubs were fully grown, she banished the female (Babli) to new territory because she was troubling the younger cubs – all 3 females. She kept the elder male – Bunty – with her despite his having grown fully (tigers, when fully grown (at age 2 years) get their senses of sight-and-sound-and-smell recalibrated and forget old relationships and move on away from their mother) and Bunty would hunt the prey, tear up the flesh for the younger ones to eat – and wait, it gets even more amazing – and sit there watching the young ones eat. He and his mother would eat only once the younger cubs had had their fill. Tigers, fully grown ones at that are not known to be filial. How Machhli managed to communicate to her full-grown son that she needed help remains a mystery. But even now, when T-17 has taken over Machhli’s (i.e. her own mother’s – as I said, full-grown tigers don’t remember old relationships) territory in the Park and Machhli is old, gets tired easily and has only one broken tooth – she still reigns supreme in her corner of the Park. And T-17s territory is not even half of what Machhli claimed in her heyday. There are recent stories of Machhli’s remarkable intelligence still being in force - to stop young males from stealing her kill in her territory, she recently clawed open her prey (killed not by biting the neck (no canines left!) but by using body weight to crush the spine) using her claws (again, due to absence of canine teeth) and divided it into 3 parts which she then went on to hide in 3 corners of her territory – so that she could get at least one of the parts. If that is not amazingly intelligent, then I don’t know what is. It is no wonder that the people of Ranthambhore revere T-16 or Machhli as a goddess.

When one hears such stories of the intelligence, bravery and sheer grace of tigers, one doesn’t doubt that the tiger will continue to remain as the symbol of Ranthambhore. Despite there being only 38 tigers left in the reserve and T-17 refusing to conceive despite 5 matings in this mating season, there is still hope for the tiger in Ranthambhore. 3 of Ranthambhore’s tigers were recently sent to repopulate the nearby Sariska Reserve (where the tiger count had reached an alarming zero!) and one hopes they can bring new life to Sariska. Yet poaching continues even in Ranthanbhore - 3/4ths of the park is not open to tourists and this is where poaching happens. To save our National animal, in all its power and regal beauty, we need to do more than join ‘Save the tiger’ groups on Facebook. We must picket for larger areas of National parks to be made open to people – that way, more vigilance is automatically built in. We should travel to these reserves; drive their economy so that local poachers find a different source of income. While we, as individuals, cannot do much about the politics which protects the poachers, we CAN form international alliances (like the Facebook group!) and groups in association with WWF or the like which can bring pressure on our government to stop poaching – and on countries like China to stop importing tiger skin/meat/bones/blood from poachers – China is single-handedly responsible for the massacre of Indian tigers.

Truly, you must see a tiger in the wild to really appreciate its proud feline power. Go to a tiger reserve NOW. You’ll help save our national animal – and gather memories to last a lifetime.

N. B. : For all the snaps of this memorable trip, see here.
All snaps courtesy Abhijit Ghaisas.