DAY 20, APRIL 10, RANTHAMBHORE NAT'L PARK

RANTHAMBHORE 1

Monkeys and deer we saw and parakeets and pea fowl,
And cranes, two crocs, a blue bird, a vulture and an owl.
But, as our Rover lurched,
Hard in vein we searched
For a lion on the prowl.


RANTHAMBHORE 2

A great day it has been,
For a tiger we have seen,
And that was a lot of fun.
You seldom get to see one,
But a tiger we have seen!


Feeling much better today. Still eating lightly.

From 6:15 till about 9:45, accompanied by a naturalist, we went out on a drive through the lion preserve in an overgrown “jeep” that can hold about 22 people. Its brand name is Eicher. I noted the Mazda name on a similar vehicle.

There was a box lunch for breakfast in the “jeep” and lunch in the hotel at 1:00. Then we did another tour through the park starting at 3:30, from which we returned about 7:15.

It is extremely dry in the nature park (tiger preserve). Lots of scrubby trees, but no foliage, so you can see through them pretty well. There are some evergreen trees (but not pines). The others had not begun to leaf out yet, which is surprising to me. The terrain is very rugged and hilly (unlike the flat land we drove through getting here) and very rocky. There's no possibility of driving elsewhere than on the very rough crude roads. (There is a main road that is paved and then unpaved roads.) Although it is dry, there are lakes. So the wildlife have access to water.

The core zone of Ranthambhore National Park is approximately 400 square kilometers. Including the buffer zone, the park is 1390 square kilometers. It contains about 40 Royal Bengal Tigers and 70 to 80 leopards. The tigers are seldom seen because they are so few. The leopards are even more rarely seen because they work the night shift and are few.

There is a lot of wildlife in the park, and you see some at almost every turn. We saw scads of langur monkeys. We saw scads of deer. There are two kinds: the larger Sambar Deer, and the smaller Spotted Deer or Chital Deer, which have white spots like a fawn. We saw scads of peafowl and lots of parakeets.

At one point on our afternoon trip we heard the distress call of a deer and parked and waited a long time, hoping to see a tiger or leopard. A great number of other vehicles lined up and waited also. But no luck that time.

Later on our afternoon trip we got real lucky and spotted a big, handsome tiger and were able to get photos. There was a lot of excitement. I think I got some good photos. Dick Opsahl got several excellent photos of the tiger and had them on his computer for all of us to see at dinner.

Sometimes in the park you see evidence of where people have lived in the past – remnants of buildings, stone walls.

I greatly enjoyed our experience in the park.

There are still some people living in the buffer zone of the park. People who were displaced from the core zone when the park was established were aided by the government in their transition to a different way of life.

We had dinner at 8 PM, and at 9 PM we went for a moonlight walk out to the main road and back under a clear sky and full moon. It's a very rough road, and Helen forgot to change into her walking shoes and walked it in her sandals.

Three more members of our group have had some amount of sickness yesterday and/or today.

Although this is a mainly Hindu nation (70% to 80%) with only a low percentage of Christians, we learned that schools are closed today because it is Good Friday.

Bernie :-)