Bandhavgarh – Day 05 – Part 2

Raj wanted to break a record, 9 game drives, 9+ tiger sightings without interruption. We think we were not the only lucky people to see tigers every day; that week the tigers were very active at Tala Range. Deepak finally got better from his flu and wanted to join Raj and us in the last drive. That was very special: they told me we had the best team together in the same car, Raj, Deepak and Dino. Raj was excited like a child, called his wife to say that he had all his friends in the jeep, we were happy too. But he also said that the last time he did that they could find no tiger…we cannot even think about this possibility!

That afternoon, the pressure was high to find a tiger, and the best to do was to get to the last point where we were in the morning, the bamboo forest where Jhurjhura had probably passed the hottest time of the day hiding from the sun.

The possibilities were all about relying on Jhurjhura and her cubs, which had also potentially joined her after we left.

Like snipers, we set position on the road side and kept eyes on the bamboo thickets across the grass field. Moving the jeep back and forth, our crew of experts reported more or less where the tigers were hiding, but we actually could not see anything but dead bamboo leaves.

John and Digpal were there, too. This time, as there was not too much action, BBC was collecting background scenes for the documentary. The light was really good at that spot of Rajbhera. There were really good things to take picture of, with the golden sunlight hitting on them, like this old strangler tree.




We left the place a couple of times to check the vicinity for some alarms calls, but they were pretty much convinced that the Jhurjhura family was still behind the bamboos.

We were already loosing hope because the gate closing time was approaching and there was still no sign of Jhurjhura or of her cubs. Even if we would see a tiger that time, our 400-100mm lenses would give us a hard time not to blur the image. I remember seeing John Aitchison filming a beautiful sunset at Rajbhera, when finally Jhurjhura put her head out of the hide.




She got out and walked calmly through the grass towards the road. It seemed that she was still interested in the chital deers which she crossed back there in Rajbhera grassland on her way to the bamboo thickets.




She interrupted her walk a couple of times to raise the head above grass and finally she selected a man-made wall of stones on the border of the road, and rested.

Jhurjhura would not move from there by the next minutes, the thing was that the gate closing time had arrived. We were one of the last jeeps to leave the place; it was our last tiger saw in Bandhavgarh. The light was not so good anymore as the sun was already low behind some tree, then that area was totally in the shade, but still we could take a few more shots.




For the relief of Raj, Deepak and Dino, the mission had been accomplished; we saw the tiger again in our last game drive there. For the proud of the crew they beat their mark – for us it couldn’t be more perfect! For a couple coming from so far of India, for the first time, seeing the tiger once would be already a blessing, seeing so many in all excursions into the park was simply unbelievable!


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Bandhavgarh – Day 05 – Part 1

Last day in Bandhavgarh. We were feeling so happy to have been awarded with some many tiger sightings that we didn’t want to leave. We actually could never imagine that we could be so blessed with that luck – we have almost seen each one of the 12 tigers that live in the Tala Range and plus, the New Male who does not belong (yet) to that area.

We had still 2 game drives to happen, but felt like we could not live anymore without that routine – safari game drives are so exciting that everyone gets easily addicted to them – the process of meeting the crew early in the morning and get to the gate, the wind blowing on our faces, the searching for tracks and sounds, screening the sand for paw prints, the thrill on each encounter before the tiger materializes just in front of our eyes, the forest atmosphere, the hot colors and smooth light through the trees towards everywhere we look while the jeep advances into the jungle, the tiger eyes meeting ours through the lenses of our cameras…

It is a never-ending collection of memories engraved in our souls that we will never forget. In the last morning drive in Bandhavgarh we just wanted to keep the rhythm, at least see any tiger, could it be a same one, could it be far away, male, female, cub – the important was to close this part of the trip with one more tiger. It would be so sad if we could not see a tiger in our last they there…

Raj took us straight to Rajbhera Lake, the lake formed by the dam in the north of Tala Range, where we had already been many times trying to spot the Jhurjhura female and her cubs.




Jhurjhura seemed to be hiding from us, we always listened to other people having been able to see her in the past days, but we had only a quick glimpse of one of her cubs running across the road. But this should be our last chance to meet her, so she had gave us a break from the hide-and-seek game: as soon as we arrived at Rajbhera area, Raj found out that she was just up on the hill preparing to cross the dam wall.







In reality, we could not be sure if she would cross the lake or if she would come downhill towards the other side, so we alternated with John Aitchinson and Digpal’s to each one of us keep in each side of the hill and notify the movements of Jhurjhura.




More jeeps arrived in the meantime and after quite some time Jhurjhura decided to cross to the other side towards the lake. We rush to the lake just around the hill and when we arrived she had already made her way over the wall of the dam, but she was still waiting on the top of some rocks just in front, along the lake shore. BBC was already filming the scene, actually one of the most beautiful scenes we could see so far, because the whole scenery was outstanding and the tones were superb.







Jhurjhura started the descent path towards the water and the sequence of her moves triggers the excitement in everyone. The crowd got delighted with the scene just happening in front of us.







Jhurjhura hesitated to dive but quickly got into water and crossed to the other border of the half-dry lake always accompanied by her own reflex in the Rajbhera lake waters.










She briefly stopped after the crossing to watch potential preys not far from there, but that time of the day it was probably too hot for a hunt – we never know!







She vanished in the high grass field for a while, and then we just moved to where Dino and Raj expected her to reappear on the road side. Magically she popped up right ahead the vehicle as expected and walked to the bamboo thickets on the other side looking for a cover, where she would probably settle for the next hours until temperature would drop to more suitable levels for hunting.




That is exactly what she did, and we left right there just after she disappeared in the middle of the bamboos.




We drove back to the main gate with that feeling of having one more mission accomplished, and as we made the turn on Chakradhara Meadow and took the main road through Siddh Baba grass land we met some jeeps parked by the road. That was the same point where we did the Tiger Show 2 days before. There was a Tiger Show still going on. Despite the hours, it seems that there is no more people left to go, so raj asked us if we wanted to go with him to the Tiger Show – the park chief ranger had just authorized him to take us on the ride despite the gate closing hours, he just made a special concession. No way would we turn down this opportunity…

There we went for the last time on a Tiger Show. We took the same mahout, Janooh, and his elephant, Bendjeni, to take us to where the tigress was sitting. Yes, Chorbhera again. That was our first tiger we saw in our trip and it could not be more suitable to see her again on our last Tiger Show, to say goodbye.




Raj had promised that a Tiger Show with him onboard would be a totally different experience. He could better instruct the mahout to do what he wanted in order to take better positions for photography and made the ride longer, nobody else in the waiting list, so we had Chorbhera just for us now.




She was relaxed, laid down more or less on the same spot where we saw the New Male on the previous Tiger Show. She looked at us with indifference; she might have seen many other people coming back and forth in the last hour.







She was alert but not concerned with our approach, until the moment when the elephant started to break some bamboos to eat. She changed her face expression all of a sudden – she got up quickly and snarled against us, looking fiercely to the elephant as if she was telling him off. And she kept snarling until we backed off, then she just settled down again and we left her by herself again.







Raj guidance on the elephant made all the difference, we could have a great moment with Chorbhera and a lot of pictures. We looked behind as Bendjeni was taking us back to the jeep, one last look of Chorbhera, she will always be our first tiger.





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Bandhavgarh – Day 04 – Part 2

Still excited about the unforgettable tiger encounters in the morning, we passed the time between breakfast and lunch counting the minutes to the afternoon game drive. The weather was so hot, so hot that we could barely stand outside our hut, where we kept reviewing the pictures and reading Deepak’s book to learn more about the tigers of the park. By that time, after having read and listened to Raj and Deepak stories during the game drives and during the “happy hour” in the evenings, we already knew all the tiger family members by name and also their line of parents and grandparents until Charger and Sita, the tigers filmed by BBC so much time ago, who turned Bandhavgarh so famous around the World.

Raj met us at lunch to tell us that he would be our guide till the end of our stay at Nature Heritage Resort. That was great news. We had so much confidence in Raj that we could just sit back on the jeep and relax; just waiting for the surprises he planned for the game drive.

We left the camp early that afternoon to get into the park in the very first minutes of afternoon period. Raj wanted to show us a little of the park ruins. We drive straight to Shesh Shaya, where there are the remaining parts of a temple to Lord Vishnu. The human figure of Vishnu lays in front of a pool – this area is in the domains of Chakradhara tigress – there could be a possibility that Chakradhara was around there to hide her young cubs from the open areas, but she was not there.




Dino then drove back to the point where we saw Jhurjhura cubs crossing the road in the morning. We learned there that some people saw the tigress and the cubs getting inside a cave to take shelter, away from the burning sun light.

All these information is exchanged between the guides as the jeeps cross each other in the roads – they stop and blab a lot in Hindi, giving no chance for us to capture anything. It often worked, but sometimes we had the impression of Raj going exactly to the opposite direction where the other guides pointed for him – we believe that Raj usually followed his own instincts rather than buying information from others. In the end, we always saw a tiger – this is what matters anyway! As we couldn’t understand a word, we took the chance to watch other things, like this serpent eagle hiding from the sun.




Jhurjhura family was still in the cave, we could barely see one of the cubs’ paws dropping out of the cave.




After a few minutes, we decide not to wait for action since they looked very relaxed, and Raj bet that they would avoid the jeeps when exiting the cave, so Raj asked us what we would like to try see next: B2 again or Mirchani cubs again? He said these were the best chances since the weather was too hot that afternoon and these tigers were the last ones seen by the mahouts after gates have been closed in the morning. So despite B2 is a fantastic cat, we decide for Mirchani cubs – as they are 2 tigers, the chances are bigger, but always keeping in mind that mathematics is not 100% applicable in the jungle.

But mathematics was on our side that time. One of the Mirchani cubs came just towards us out from the forest – vision was clear, Raj made Dino take an excellent position just predicting the cub path and we could just be face-to-face with him as he approached the road.










He crosses the road just in front of the jeep and entered the grass land in the other side. For our luck the grass was not so high and we could follow him until he found a spot to drop that big body, his back towards us, though.







That was the same cub that had the porcupine quill on his head, and we clearly see that he managed removing it – good boy – but he still scratched the itchy wounds every other time.










As his mother in the morning, he took quite some time relaxing just for delight of the audience, and he seemed not to mind the sun at all. Look at those stripes from the back of the head to the tip of his tail: down to the neck it seems to have symmetry along the spine and as we follow the line towards the tail, the patterns smoothly looses the symmetry and assumes a random design – it’s the art of the nature.




It was so lovely to see that such a beautiful tiger was growing up in the wilderness; Bandhavgarh is a real paradise for its small population of 12 tigers. We could rest the whole afternoon there, but then Raj said that we were pretty far from the park entrance and we should start driving back to try our luck with B2 near to the Chakradhara Meadows on the way to the gate.




Not much far from where we were with the Mirchani cub, we saw a gathering of jeeps along the road, the people already clicking their cameras frenetically. It could not be anything else but TIGER!. A totally unexpected sighting. Not even Raj was aware that there was another tiger nearby – at least nobody had reported any.

The tiger was simply lying on the ground very close of road’s edge over a layer of dead bamboo leaves and surrounded by bamboo thickets. A very different scenery, with new colours and a new tiger. Bokha was his name.







Bokha is a nephew of B2, precisely, the son of B3. One interesting story about Bokha is that he is the only male tiger besides B2 in Tala Range. He has conquered his own territory out of B2’s without any fight. B2, despite his size and after having systematically expelled all intruders and all other challengers from Tala Range, he has tolerated his nephew, Bokha, around his domain boundaries and left to him a piece of it. B2 is a really a king, strong but diplomatic!







We were very excited with this magic appearance! We had just read about Bokha in our room that afternoon, and then we met him personally in the jungle. His unmistakable characteristic is the broken tooth.







We kept observing the magnificent tiger yawning, then standing up and leaving into the jungle, not before squirting urine on a tree to mark territory.




What a day!

In the way back to the lodge, as soon as we crossed the park main gate, we faced a queue of jeeps – can it be a traffic jam in that place? Actually there was a reason behind that mess. The sun was already down and the tourists were jumping out of the vehicles and pointing to bushes by the side of the road. The cameras flashing indicated the presence of something interesting – what could it be? A jungle cat? A jackal? Or maybe a fox?

Nope. We also get off the jeep (no other option because the cars could not move anyway). Finally we see what was attracting so much attention of the crowd: two rat-snakes mating. Come on!





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Bandhavgarh – Day 04 – Part 1

After a couple of days seeing tiger, we already start to see tigers in our dreams, the alarm calls and the tiger names, Chorbhera, B2, Jhurjhura, echoes in our heads and when we wake up early with one of the assistants knocking on the door, for a moment, we don’t know if we have just arrived from a game drive or if we are going to it. The safaris have a lasting hypnotic effect to the point of making us polarize all our thoughts to the tigers even when we are relaxed.

Raj wanted to show us the park as if it was his own home, and it really is. We had a feeling that if Raj was with us, the tigers would show up. We had not to worry about the guide or the driver to be doing the right thing, we trust him the planning for the game drives - as it always worked till this point, and we let ourselves in the hands of Siddh Baba.

Raj asks to Dino to takes us straight to the place where Mirchani tigress was seen the day before. She does not walk together her cubs anymore, but they are always around. It does not take too long to see a mahout and his elephant looking for the tigress – it was a very dense jungle area with bamboo thickets bended towards each other making arches – very picturesque – somewhere on Route C.

Some jeeps are already taking place in the side of a road, as we approach. We could see Mirchani walking through the forest. She heads to an area with no bushes, but shady, covered by a thick layer of canopies, and settled down there, immediately lying down on the ground painted of green short grass.










Dino found a way to get a good view and once more we delighted the superb opportunity of seeing that beautiful animal. This time the tigress was totally relaxed, the spot she had chosen to rest was quite cooler than the rest of the area around so she took quite a long time there for the joy of the audience of photographers, tourists and film makers watching.







She lifted the head a couple of times when another jeep arrived to join the crowd, and then Raj commands to Dino to change the position, to give us some different angles. Mirchani was really likely to stay there all the day, given the situation.







Half-hour later, she raised the head and changed her distracted face by a more alert mood. Then it took just a couple of minutes to Mirchani stand up and started walking again. Despite the increasing temperature, she decides to leave the shade and entered the jungle again. What an adorable sighting!













We were still looking for the Jhurjhura family. We had not the chance to see them yet, when it seemed that everyone else had. So we took the direction of the Rajbhera Lake, the territory of the Jhurjhura tigress, but just great egrets, ducks and a solitary kingfisher were hanging around there.

Kingfisher


Great Egret


While still circulating by that area we saw a wild boar feeding from a carcass of a male chital deer, probably killed by a tiger or a leopard. The wild boar, as the warthogs, may recur to scavenging practice sometimes. The carcass had already dragged attention of vultures. In the scene we could see the 3 species of vultures that can be found in Bandhavgarh: the King Vulture (red necked vulture), the Indian Vulture (the one with white head) and the Egyptian Vulture (shortest and crested one). Not a beautiful view, but seeing all 3 types of vultures was really a prize.

Wild Boar with Chital Carcass and Indian Vultures


King Vulture


Egyptian Vulture


A more pleasant view, in the other hand, young Rhesus Monkeys chasing each other from branch to branch on the top of a short tree, turned to be an interesting subject. The monkeys had never deceived us with boring attitude – they had always plenty of faces and poses to show, however these agitated apes had never stopped more than a few seconds for a picture.

Rhesus Macaque Juvenile


By arriving in the vicinity of Rajbhera Lake we search the area, but with no success. We spent another 30 minutes there waiting to hear some alarm call to indicate us where they could be. Raj was sure that they would come to the water any time since the temperature was raising fast, but there are no rules in wildlife.

Rajbhera Lake View


Raj decides to expand the search area and on our quest to find Jhurjhura we found fresh tracks – alarm calls coming from the jungle on the sides of the road. It was Mirchani again – one of Mirchani cubs could be seen walking between the trees not too much far from the road, but he was already going into the jungle back from wherever he was before.




Raj and Dino told us he was a Mirchani cub but we couldn’t say if he was the same one we saw some days before with the quills stuck in the head. Back home, after comparing the stripes patterns with our other pictures of male tigers, we could identify him as the other one of Mirchani brothers as his prints could not match to any pattern of the other male tigers.

Even a quick sight of a tiger is a great excitement, even more when it is totally unexpected. The search goes back to the Jhurjhura tigers, and we drove again around the lake searching for tracks and then, we cross the cars moving fast in another road – they were going towards a tiger, for sure. After chatting to each other, the guides exchange information about what is happening. The Jhurjhura family was in the other side of the road, coming from the lake (how could we have not seen them!), and the tigress and one of the cubs had already passed in front of the jeeps parked on the road crossing to the other side and went into the forest. Raj told us that a cub was still about to cross so we should be prepared for it, because the cub was hidden from our sight somewhere near the road but the people could still hear the tigress calling the cub sometimes.




We were not in a good position since we arrived quite “late” to the spot, but as Raj said, like a lightning bolt, the cub leaps onto the road and crossed it in a matter of seconds. Despite the people partially blocking our view, we could see the cub sprint towards his mother. Comparing the cub to the Mirchani cub, it is noticeable how younger the Jhurjhura cubs are. They still depend on their mother who hunts for them, while the Mirchani are already living by themselves and do not count anymore on their mother’s intervention.

Now, back to the camp.


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