The tiger is fading away from the Indianjungles, and conservation efforts can be compared to trying to keep a matchstick flame alive in a cupped hand during a raging storm. Generations to come will have to depend on virtual reality, surround sound and digital media to experience this majestic beast that has been the soul of Indian jungles for time immortal. But for you and me the time is now, it is still possible to see this magnificent beast shining bright and roaring loud in the jungles of central IndiaSo it would have been silly of me not to grab yet another opportunity of seeing tigers in the wild. I had a week and the big and fast Toyota Corolla at my disposal whose nose I pointed east from Mumbai and headed for the interiors of Madhya Pradesh. The plan was drive from Mumbai to Nagpur, then onto Kanha and Bandhavgarh, take a break a Bhopal, and visit Sanchi and head back to Mumbai.
Two days later I rolled into the gates of the Royal Tiger Resort in Kanha. My two days in the park yielded lots of herbivores, but only one carnivore. So when I left from Kanha towards Bandhavgarh I was fervently praying that the tigers in the other park wouldn’t be so bashful.
The drive from Kanha to Bandhavgarh took me right through the heart of rural Madhya Pradesh and half of this 350km drive was on dirt tracks passing through dense forest, across dried and cracked river beds that told the story of a harsh Indian summer. Even though the cars AC put up a valiant struggle I could feel the heat radiating through the glass. Getting out of the car was like stepping into a giant oven on full flame. When the sun slipped behind some clouds there was little relief as if some celestial hand had turned down the knob marginally.
My base at Bandhavgarh was Tiger Den. As soon as I was settled in with a chilled drink to cool me down Raghu came over to talk tigers. Raghu is Tiger Den’s resident naturalist and very knowledgeable when it comes to tracking tigers. He laid out the scene for me. There were three females, two males and 6 cubs in the tourist zone of the park.
“Will I see any?” I asked
“Without any doubt!” he replied.
These are the words that have endeared Bandhavgarh to me since I first visited it in 2002. While at other parks guides look away and seamlessly transfer the possibility of spotting a tiger on the whims of lady luck, guides at Bandhavgarh have enough faith in there abilities and the cat within, to give an confident assurance. Yes you will see a tiger in the wild.
The next morning we drove in at 5.30am sharp and at 5.37 we encountered Ram Charan the mahout riding the gentle Indrajeet, a huge tusker. “Yes, yes”, he said before I even voiced my question, “We’ve tracked a tiger it’s sitting there in the woods beyond the grassy field.” Raghu laid a restraining hand on my shoulder because he’d anticipated that I’d jump straight from the rear of the jeep into the howdah in my eagerness. It seems there were new rules in the park now. We had to compulsorily finish the route assigned to us and then only could we get onto an elephant. So Raghu and I set off as fast as you can go in the jungle covering our route, spotting vultures and immediately smelling the foul odour of a rotting carcass. We came across randy peacocks flouting their feathers and tap dancing well enough to give Gene Kelly a run for his money. Soon enough I was behind Ram Charan swaying to Indrajeet’s gait as we headed for the densely forested slope where the Sindh Baba female was resting. She was magnificent, bold and quite an exhibitionist, so we could get very close. But Ram Charam reigned in Indrajeet when the low rumble in the tigress’s throat turned into a sound like a long roll of thunder. “Okay no closer sahib” he declared and made the haathi stand absolutely still while I photographed. I could see every whisker and every canine and even the pink triangle of her nose 
Suddenly she heard a deer and in a fluid movement leapt up and ran to investigate. That’s when I realized that she’d leapt to the left and her leap had carried her a distance further than at which we were standing right in front of her. So if she wished she could have easily leapt into the howdah. What an obituary that would have made – mauled by a tigress while on elephant back!The next day we took the Corolla into the jungle and Raghu’s darting eyes yielded a wild dog and a baby python. We stopped to observe the snake and it slid under the car in a burst of speed. We waited for it to appear on the other side but 5 minutes passed and there was no sign of it. I got the nauseating feeling that it had managed to slide into the car from the under body. I already started having visions of it sliding up my leg while I was doing 140kph on the Bhopal road when Raghu spotted it sliding away from the same side. It had turned around underneath and retracted.
That day too the mahaouts had spotted tigers the elephant ride took me to four 6-month old cubs.
My last foray into the park was simply the best I’ve ever had at Bandhavgarh. I was the only car into the park that morning and perhaps I’d not slept well that night so I was dozing in the jeep when Raghu suddenly braked hard and jabbed me hard in the ribs. My eyes flew open and there standing on slight rise on the road ahead, nonchalant and secure in the knowledge that he was king and feared, was B2, the most dominant male in Bandhavgarh. He started walking towards us stopping at some trees to mark territory. We kept backing up and he kept walking towards us. For 45 minutes we had him at close quarters. He’d keep cutting into the jungle and returning back to the road. Then he’d just stop and stare at us before starting off again. Believe me, it is not the coat that has given the tiger the adage of burning bright…it is his eyes. When a tiger holds you in its fiery yellow gaze, it caresses your soul with a terrifying warmth, and you feel a mixture of unadulterated fear and holy awe at the magnificence of the striped being that is checking you out.
Finally B2 wandered off into the jungle and we continued onto a place called Amarnalla where two of his cubs were lolling about. The female was jittery at the sight of us and she threw a tantrum, bared her teeth, growled a little and ran off into dense cover. Her brother on the other hand had inherited his father’s eyes and courage and just lay there confident that he could induce more fear in us than we in him.
I returned from Bandhavgarh happy at my sightings and pictures, but sad that slowly and steadily these beautiful cats are fading away.
At Sanchi I took in the peaceful stupa and stared at Ashoka’s emblem, four lions back to back. The symbol of an ancient and powerful dominion that today is on every Indian banknote. But where are the lions? Two thousand years ago in Ashoka’s time they roamed the subcontinent in swarms, but we’ve wiped them out so that now only a few specimens survive claustrophobic and constrained within the Gir National park. Let’s not let that happen with the tiger…
