Corbett Tiger Reserve

Day 1: 10 April 2005

We tried to have an early start this morning, but, despite our excitement, we didn't leave Ramnagar until 8:30. We hopped into the 1/2 open Suzuki jeep thing that would be our vehicle for the next 3 days and set out for Corbett Tiger Reserve with our driver, Bhola. CTR (as it shall be called from here on) was established in 1936 by Jim Corbett, a tiger hunter and also a legend here in India. He was greatly revered by locals for shooting tigers who had developed a liking for humans, but he eventually became an avid preserver of wildlife. CTR itself is now over 1300 sq km, and Jim Corbett established Project Tiger in 1973, which led to the creation of 22 other reserves throughout India.

The park is less than 50 kms from Ramnagar, and it was a beautiful drive. Our jeep wound its way through forests and nearly clean air. On the way to our accommodation inside the park, we saw wild boars, a kingfisher fishing, some sambar deer, rhesus monkeys, and our very first tiger. We had stopped the jeep just above a nearly dried up riverbed, as Bhola (who speaks little, but enough, English) has seen tigers here before. I spotted an orangish brown patch in some green grass just as Bhola said "Deer, deer!" But then it started to move, and I said "It's a tiger!" I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me (what are the chances of seeing a tiger withing one kilometer and 5 minutes of entering the park???) but Nigel saw it too and said it was a tiger. We watched him slowly wander out of the bushes and start to cross the riverbed. Then we actually did spot a deer on the other side of the river, alert and watchful. The deer quietly took off, but the tiger still made his way leisurely across the stream. It was an amazing sight, seeing this beautiful animal walking with the forests and mountains surrounding him. We thought he might go and chase the deer, but he didn't seem to be in much of a hurry. And before we knew it, he was on the other side and hidden in the forest once again. We drove up the road a ways to wait and see if he'd cross the road. We saw it briefly through the bushes but it moved on and out of sight. We were so happy and excited, as this is why we came here. This was all topped off with seeing a huge bull elephant wander across the road in front of us, only to reaveal a peacock behind him, feathers shooting up in his little mating jig.

We arrived at Dhikala, the main accommodation campus inside the park, at around noon. We checked into our room, the term 'very basic' not even accurate. There are 12 beds in the dorm rooms, 4 3-tier bunks that are old train beds. We could say the beds are as hard as planks of wood, but in fact they ARE planks of wood. We couldn't help but feel like we slept on a shelf for 2 nights. We had to shove our backpacks and belongings into small lockers so that the rhesus macaques can't get to them. Apparently they take great pleasure in 'breaking into' the room and pilfering anything they fancy. The toilets are nothing short of disgusting, although I guess somehow they could be worse. We wouldn't mind all of this if we'd only paid, say, 50 rupees per bed, which is what the Indian guests pay. But foreigners must pay 200 rupees per bed for the same accommodation (Indians and foreigners have separate dormitories but they're similar), 4 times as much. And they only pay 50 rupees for a 3-day park permit, when foreigners must pay 450 rupees, 9 times as much! We're glad that they encourage Indians to travel here because it encourages them to take care of their environment and wildlife, and it's beautiful. And we don't mind paying more as foreigners, but this is a bit excessive. The facilities at Dhikala are atrocious, the staff lazy and rude, the restaurant poisoned (as we later learned), and politics nothing short of discriminatory.

Nonetheless, we were happy to be here. We locked up our gear and shared a small lunch before hanging out on the deck while we waited for our 4:00 safari. The campus is located above the Ramganga River, overlooking the water and a massive grass plain that stretches over 1 kilometre to the surrounding forested mountains. We had an afternoon of watching birds fly around, the langurs and monkeys play around in the trees, and watch the wild elephants grazing the distant plains. At 4:00 we met our driver Bhola and our guide. Everyone must have an offical park guide, at 150 rupees per safari trip. We drove through the forests and across the river at a shallow point, all the while searching for a tiger. On the way back, we came around a corner and saw a tiger about 30 feet (or less) from the road, having a drink in a small pond. This tiger was absolutely massive, and absolutely stunning. He was haunced over, lapping up water with his huge pink tongue. He looked up at us for a few seconds, then slowly got up and wandered into the trees, as if saying "Man, I was having a good drink there, but I've been disturbed now. I guess I'll go find somewhere else to get a drink." He was so beautiful, graceful, wise and powerful, all at the same time.

**WARNING: This next paragraph may be offensive and stomach-churning to some. Please skip to the next paragraph if you wish to save yourself the tormnent. It's our diary too, and we like to laugh at stuff like this, after the fact of course.***
By this time, I was really feeling the effects of eating tainted food at the dodgy restaurant for lunch. It had been building up all afternoon, and I knew I needed to get back to the campus. As we were driving away from where we saw the tiger, and towards campus to drop me off, I knew my stomach was about to relinquish all it had in about 10 seconds. Nige had the driver stop for a minute, and I asked them, hurriedly, if I could get out of the jeep. It is strictly prohibited to be on foot anywhere in the park other than within the Dhikala campus, guides and drivers included. But I broke the rules, jumped out of the jeep and just barely hit the ground before a Niagra of dhal, naan and rice spewed out from me. Nige jumped out to rub my back, and Bhola and the guide both jumped out to protect us all from that huge, massive tiger we just saw down the road. Only I could manage to stop a tiger safari to vomit, and nearly get mauled by a tiger in the process. But, my lunch expunged, I was able to get back into the jeep and make it to the dorms for some rest. At least I made it through 7 whole days in India before getting sick.

With me cozy on my shelf in the room, Nige continued on in search of wildlife. He saw hundreds of deer, all 4 species in the park: spotted deer (chital), hog deer, barking deer, and sambar deer. The last type is what we saw on our night safari in Vietnam, although we thought they were saying 'Summer deer' at the time. He also saw wild elephants, wild boars, and lots of birds. He returned just after sunset, checked up on me (feeling like I will live by this point), ate dinner by himself, and then everyone in our dorms went to bed as we had to be up at 5:30 am for our morning safari. There were 8 of us now in the room, 2 Texans, 2 guys from Michigan, and 2 Isralis in addition to us. During the night, one of the Texans suddenly became violently ill from his dinner at the dodgy restaurant. Although the rest of us only had intermitent sleep, we have all been there before and felt nothing by sympathy for the poor bugger.

Day 2: 11 April 2005

We jumped out of bed this morning around 5:45, already awake from the monkeys jumping around on the metal roof. We packed our sleeping bags into our monkey-proof boxes, rugged up and met our driver at the jeep. The sun was already starting to rise, and it was a gorgeous, peaceful morning. We drove around for about 2 hours and saw tons of deer, wild elephants and lots of other things. A massive elephant bull with huge tusks crossed the road only about 20 feet from us. He was so incredibly big, but so gentle and quiet. Next we climbed one of the watchtowers to look for tigers, then saw one only about 5 minutes later. We watched her move across the grass along the river, then flew down the tower stairs, jumped in the jeep and sped off to get a closer look. Our guide and driver were an excellent team, great at reading the animals and trying to predict their movements. Once we stopped, it didn't take long to spot the tiger again. She was laying behind a rock, in the grass (literally, "grass" as in canabis as most of the river is lined with millions of dollars worth of the stuff) across the river, and she was munching on a Sambar deer. We could see her head pop up from behind the rock every now and then, and the deer leg would pop up as she ripped some meat off. She looked at us a few times, but didn't seem too bothered by us watching her. It was so fantastic to just watch her eat breakfast, and she was so quiet. We sat there for a while observing her until a few other jeeps roared up and scared her off into the plains.

For the rest of the afternoon, we had absolutely nothing to do. There is a watch tower nearby that you can normally walk to but the tigress with 4 cubs has been agressive to jeeps recently so they closed it. During the the day no vehicles are allowed to drive around so we just hung out watching the plain across the river, the monkeys and langurs. While sitting ther we were attacked by these little gnat type bugs that somehow managed to get up our shirts and pants and bite our bodies.

Our afternoon safari was on an elephant. We had booked it yesterday but heard stories of tourists being bumped off the list for Indians. Nige managed to pay in a bit earlier although they really didn't want to take the money. We had also paid Mr Govind at the restaurant in Ramnagar a "guarantee" to get us onto an elephant trek. This can also be known as a bribe. It worked and we were on our elephant out to torment some wild tigers. We shared the elephant with a young Indian family and we sat sideways instead of the forward facing technique we had experienced in Thailand and Vietnam. It seemed far more comfortable... well not more comfortable just less rocking side to side. We walked down the hill and across the river onto the huge floodplain. Walking along the river bank the elephant took huge clumps of cannabis to eat as he walked along, he was happy. As we approached the area where we had seen the tiger this morning there was a row of jeeps parked on the other side so we knew there was a tiger nearby. The next 20 seconds happened very quickly. Looking down into the cannabis for tigers we heard the elephant trumpet (apparently they arew trained to trumpet when they see a tiger) and suddenly there were 4 tigers around us. The tigers roared back at the elephants and the elephants trumpeted and growled back at them. One tiger was crouched snarling at the other elephant and then Kel pointed out that another one was right at our feet. It was crouched down looking up at us and snarling ready to pounce. In the words of Steve Irwin, "Absolutely Gorgeous". The tiger turned and ran toward the open plain and our elephant took a few quick steps after it. Two tigers stayed near the river two went off onto the plain and one went further upstream. We followed the single tiger upstream for a while until it crossed the river and out of sight. We would have gone back to see the remaining two but it would have been dangerous as they knew we were there and they woud have attacked. This and the fact that it was a tigress and four cubs and she has been aggressive lately. The cubs are pretty much the same size of the tigress. After crossing back over the river and treking through the forest we finished our exciting elephant ride, had some dinner and went off to bed.

Day 3: 12 April 2005

Nige didn't sleep much last night thanks to the shitty restaurant here at Corbett. We got up early again for another morning Jeep safari. We saw a tiger straight away this morning in the same spot we saw it from the elephant. There was a herd of wild elephants approaching and the tiger got up and moved on. After a drive around the river area looking for more tigers we saw some wild elephants walk down the road into the jungle. Nige was dropped off at campus this time and Kel went on to see the plains. She saw hundreds of deer, wild elephants, birds, boar. At one stage they almost got charged by a massive bull elephant peering at them from the edge of the jungle. It was looking at the jeep, ears out and started to rumble and flicked its tusk towrd them. Thats when it was time to move on.

Back at campus we slowly packed up and left about 11a.m. after we had checked out and got our permission to leave slip for being a well behaved visitor. We shared our jeep with Rolf a guy we met on the shelves. He is a very interesting guy who has done a lot of travel and for a moment we thought he might be Rolf Potts who wrote one of our favourite travel books, Vagabonding. It turns out he isn't Rolf Potts but he does know him. It was a nice drive back to Ramnagar chatting to him about travel, life, and combining the two. We had a brief glimpse of another tiger heading into the jungle. We drove up to where the driver had seen it and in the dust of the road saw a perfect tiger imprint. It had been laying there in the sun making tiger dust angels. We could make out the tail, body, legs and head. The driver picked up a porcupine quill with some blood on it, so it may have been taking a cat nap after lunch (sorry I couldn't resist).

Back in Ramnagar we rested in a hotel room for the afternoon, cleaned up, and caught our overnight train back to Delhi. We are heading to Varanasi but it is an easier connection through Delhi.

Despite the challange of getting here, surviving the restaurant, the bugs, the shelves, the cost, and the staff it was definately worth the trip to Corbett Tiger and Cannabis Reserve. Seeing these amazing animals in the wild was a very memorable experience.