Our month ended in the most extraordinary way as Llew and I embarked on a tiger safari to Tadoba National Park that we had planned and booked, almost a year ago. We were joined by our friends, Nafisa and Husefa Nasrullah, whom I have known for decades--they have been my travel companions in Italy, Orissa, Matheran and now Tadoba. Jennine and John Slavin, South Africans, whom we have only recently befriended through my Mumbai Connexions Club rounded off our group. Getting to Tadoba involved a short hour-long flight to Nagpur from where we were picked up in a private car for the two-hour drive to the park. We checked speedily into Taaru Vaan, a privately-run forest resort, where we had en suite rooms that were incredibly comfortable.
No sooner did we drop off our backpacks than we launched on the first of six freezing dawn and boiling hot afternoon safari drives, each of which took place in a different section of the park. Having been twice to Ranthambore in Rajasthan when we were sorely disappointed (not having glimpsed a single tiger), this time we had a veritable feast of sightings for we saw 13 tigers in four days—an embarrassment of riches! It is amazing how well the trackers are trained to recognize deer calls that warn of tigers in the vicinity. They lose no time then in calling each other on their mobiles to identify the exact spot at which a tiger sighting is likely to occur in a park that is 1800 square kilometers in size. For four days, tigers prowled right besides our open-top safari jeeps and allowed us to shoot them at such close quarters that we actually held our breath in awe and respect for these magnificent creatures whose coloring is so complicated and whose stripes make them so distinctive.
We awoke at 5.30 am each morning to have a quick coffee and cookies before boarding the jeeps that took us deep into the frigid heart of the forest—itself a thing of great beauty and constantly changing facets. Although tigers are the main attraction at Tadoba, we saw wild animals galore such as a sloth bear and her cub (adorable!), herds of spotted white deer, large tan-colored sambar deer and a stately group of neelgai (blue deer). There were hundreds of black-faced monkeys called Hanuman langurs, a whole bunch of wild boar and several gaur (massive Indian bison). As for birds, we had our fill of them—any number of hawks and eagles (crested, brown-breasted, etc.), owls, spotted doves, mynahs, and dozens of waterfowl such as mallards, cormorants, terns, loons, ibis, storks, kingfishers, egrets, herons, etc. They crowded the lake side where we also spotted a baby crocodile. I am delighted to say that the Indian Forestry Department is doing a marvelous job in its preservation efforts. Strict rules are followed in the park, and no one breaks them. We’d usually stop for breakfast on the trail in the middle of the morning safari (hard boiled eggs, an Indian item such as vegetable cutlets, aloo paratha, poha, butter and jam sandwiches, hot tea and coffee). Back at the hotel, we had adequate time for rest before we met for a buffet lunch followed by the afternoon safari that began at 2.00 pm. When we returned after sunset, there were tea and snacks awaiting us (pakoras, onion bajjis, kachoris) and just a little later, our lovely group would convene on lawn chairs for sundowners—red wine for Llew, rum and coke for Husefa, G&Ts for the rest of us, as we nibbled on the munchies we had carried. A big dinner brought the curtain down on our days in the wild. We loved every aspect of our travels, not least the glimpses of Maharastrian rural life to which we were treated in the villages through which we drove, the flocks of goats and massive herds of cows we saw as peasants led them to pasture, the wheat, gram and millets fields soaking in the winter sunshine, the machans that are constructed so that farmers could climb up to seek safety from wild animals as many of the tigers—get this—are, in fact, man-eaters! It was hard to forget that in the midst of so much beauty, we were in the territory of wild animals that could get hostile at any moment and turn on us.
The Slavins left early, as John, CEO of an international conglomerate based in Bombay, had an important investors’ meeting for which he had to prepare. That left just four of us in the jeep on the last day, when we had our most memorable sightings: Tigress Bublee making her way to a water hole, all the while crying out for her two cubs that had strayed. She cooled off, lapped water and left roaring as she continued her search for them. All this unfolded before our very eyes as we watched in disbelief. Indeed, tigers revealed themselves to us in varied facets: asleep, clawing at trees, lying on their backs (their hind legs exposed), playing with their siblings, going on the prowl and stalking herds of deer, bathing in water holes and seeking their cubs. On the last day, we had a chance to descend from the jeep and venture into the wheat and gram fields and pluck ripe cotton stalks from cottonfields. It was with much sadness that we bade Tadoba a final goodbye after four blissful days in the lap of Nature.
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