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 01 – Part 1

Our first game drive in India, and in Bandhavgarh, was about to start, it was 3:00pm when we have got into the jeep (“gipsy” as they call), to go to the main gate to get the permissions. Onboard we had Deepak and the driver Sujan. At the gate, the procedure requires that a park ranger of the Forest Department goes onboard with us throughout the game drive to guide and to ensure the good practices and rules of the park are being obeyed – this time we had Siddhu, a local experienced ranger, with us.

In the afternoons, the jeeps can go anywhere without having to keep a designated route. The route system is reserved for the morning drives only, what we will explain later on the next posts.







Deepak is focused on tracking the tigers – that is what we are all looking for, right? So we enter the park through the main gate – it may sound very silly, but we felt like entering in the “Jurassic Park” – the Bandhavgarh park is a very dense jungle in most of the areas, the vegetation is not all dry yet and the trees and bamboos are tall, filtering the sun shine along the tracks and covering the ground with reddish and yellowish tones of dead leaves. The tracks are mostly designed with fine sand. As the jeep advances into the jungle, the sunlight beams penetrate the bamboos foliages and the canopies of the tall Sal trees creating a mysterious and serene atmosphere. The air is fantastically hot, above the 40°C and the shade is so convenient.

The main objective is to find a tiger (our first one), but of course we have started getting introduced to the local wildlife. We have first spotted the Chital or Spotted Deer and the Langur Monkeys, both very typical species which we will see many times in all game drives. The park is also a great place for observing the local birds such as the Serpent Eagle and the Red-Watted Lapwing.







All of a sudden, the car stops, we hear an alarm call, a loud barking of a Sambhar Deer, a big kind of antelope. Again, and again. Deepak explains that the Sambhar alarm call is the sign of potential threat, meaning a bigcat (tiger or leopard) is around. In the right side of the track there was a hill all spread with trees, dry bushes and dead leaves, the last cracking with the heavy steps of the antelope.




The Sambhar is looking fixedly ahead and calls again. Deepak releases a whisper-shout: “Tiger! Tiger!! Keep silence!”. We couldn’t see the tiger yet, but then we saw the Sambhar standing still and looking straight forward and barking again – we then realize the sound of the steps cracking the twigs and dead leaves distinctively heavy but progressing in a smoother pace than the ones we had heard before, so we turn our heads towards where the sound was coming from and, slightly upper on the hill we notice something slowly moving through the dry bushes. Deepak points: “There, a little up, do you see? Don’t worry, the tiger will come down and cross the road in front of us, believe me!”. As magic, the distinguishable head of the bigcat materializes amongst the vegetation and, in a couple of seconds after, we can see its whole body heading downwards the hill.




Our hearts were beating fast in that moment, that one was our first tiger encounter. The moment we have planned so much and aimed to see is now coming true. The Sambhar alarm call sounds again, louder than ever, breaking the silence of the jungle echoing in all around and chilling our spines – the Sambhar is following the tiger trail, chasing it away to ensure the bigcat was really moving away from there.







Then the tiger appears from behind a tree trunk in the edge of the road. No other cars around, it was our private encounter, our very first tiger sighting! We will never forget it!




Deepak says: “This is a tigress called Chorbhera. This is her territory, around Siddh Baba”. Chorbhera crossed the road calmly, just in front of us, as predicted by Deepak, and she reached the other edge of the road on the left and dives into the open grassland covered with high vegetation. She moves slightly limping one hind leg due to an almost healed injury we could barely notice.










We could still follow her for few more minutes before she vanished in the sea of tall grass, just after a last glance of her black ears stained of white spots above the grass.







That was a fantastic moment we will keep forever in our minds. The senses, the sounds, the vision. Our first tiger encounter could not be more authentic and unique.







Elliot Neep (a professional photographer who has helped us with a lot of information about tiger photography) was totally right, the 1st tiger sighting is a very strong emotional experience. You get connected with the eyes of the tiger and the World around disappears, it rests only you and the tiger. After having lived this experience, I personally think that the deer alarm calls, the deep silence, the atmosphere of the jungle, the smells, everything in the scenery evokes the deepest human instincts of survival and all senses become accurate and focused exclusively on the big cat.

We had in mind to reserve this first encounter to enjoy the moment rather than living the experience through the lenses of our cameras, but we still have taken some good pictures despite the shaking hands – we had prepared ourselves for that!

Mission accomplished. The driver moves on.