At the outset let me confess, I saw no tiger. I prayed, visualized, ranted and chanted – all to no avail. The other animals, well, they were quite wonderful, but by the time I tried some artistic composition on my camera, they’d decided to scamper away. So I got a lot of butts, just a lot of pretty elegant animal butts on display.
But you know what I discovered? The stakeout can be as much fun. A tiger sighting would have definitely been the cherry on the cake – no denying. But to sit there quietly, catching rustling leaves, hushing on a deer’s alarm call, or langoors scampering in anticipation of a predator, the heart racing every second with the prospect of the beautiful creature walking down the road, looking at us from behind the tall grass in disdain, scornful at our obvious eagerness. Sometimes we would see the leaves quiver at a distance and scream out, that’s a tiger for sure, I am telling you, only to get an admonishing, “Nahi Madam, that is a spotted deer” from the forest guide accompanying us.
The heart raced every time the leaves rustled or a deer called in distress. Oh, the excitement!
When the last futile safari ended, our forest guide said wisely, “He is the king of the jungle. What would be his value if you could see him whenever you wanted?”
So we had to make do with a lot of stories – some funny and some not so much. Here are few.
First. Once a tigress attacked a tourist vehicle and dragged two tourists out of it. Their driver picked up a stick and hit the tigress to distract the creature, who promptly dropped the tourists and attacked the driver. In desperation, the driver hit out at the tigress’s mouth only to realize that oops, this one had no teeth! Turns out that few days back a safari car hit the tigress and since then she had been wary of the vehicle; hence the attack. Tigers consider safari vehicles as harmless and part of the background. They rarely attack.
Second. A sad one. Once a forest ranger was tracing the trail of a tiger tracking elephant in the reserve when he suddenly stumbled upon a tigress and her three cubs. Face to face. Right down there. He fetched out his walkie talkie and whispered quietly in resignation “There is a tigress in front of me. This is the end I think. Come fetch me in some time.” Half an hour later, the patrol car found his body parts strewn all over, half eaten.
Third. Our safari car driver Manindra told us a story of his friend’s nephew Gopal, also lovingly called Gopla. He was once out in the fields building a road along with his pals. He turns to lay some bricks, turns back to say something and notices the whole lot gone. Vanished. He scratches his head wondering what was wrong. He turns back – and then he understands. A huge tigress tumbling down the fence towards him. He stands absolutely still, shivering in fear, while the beast sniffs him and saunters away disinterested. His relief is short-lived as he soon sees her cubs tumbling down after her jumping at him in an attempt to play. He starts to run, the cubs follow as if in a game and their mother noticing their pursuit joins them. Gopla’s final respite comes when he climbs up a thorny tree as the tigers look up at him in wonder. He stays there till his uncle arrives with guns and reinforcement. By that time, the tigers are gone. Yet, it takes an hour of persuasion to get their Gopla down from the tree.
Pench National Park is a lovely forest area – well kept, closest to Mumbai (overnight train to Nagpur and then 2 hours by road). The locals are charming and the resorts marvelous.
We stayed at
Mahua Vann which we really liked, specially the service.
But all said and done, if tiger viewing is the objective, Pench may not be the place – especially if you rarely win at card games. You have to be really, really lucky to see a tiger. The reason I am told is the route system the reserve follows as against the zone system say in Kanha, which tilts the scale. Still, the fire has been ignited and a tiger I shall see. Soon.
Since I took some really terrible pictures – I would like to include some tips.
Carry a really good DSLR camera - animals at a reserve are wild and they do not stand around to have their pictures taken (hence the butt fiesta). Keep your point and shoot away and invest in some good lens and camera. Lot of zooming will happen.
Next, forget composition, keep clicking. Let your ISO stay high and shutter speed fast for as many clicks as possible to capture animal movement. At least some of them will turn out alright. This is against my usual principle, but the animals have brought me to my knees. Some more great tips
here.
Monopod is better than the tripod – but neither is very useful according to me. You have to be very alert and flexible.
The bottom-line is - be prepared and be patient, wild animals are extremely flighty.
