If I am a bit down I often let my mind drift back to some of my significant wildlife encounters I have had in my life. I am so lucky, there has been many, but this one has to rank amongst the top if not top itself.
Pete and I were on a tour of North India. It had been a dream all my life to go to India. This dream had started with being read Jungle book as a child and went on from there to reading Passage to India and the Raj quartet, Black Tulip etc as an adult.
Finally in my 50s I could afford to go. This was having struggled through a stressful career in Social work management having done my stint in child protection on the frontline. This incidentally led eventually to contributing to my psychological breakdown near retirement. I learnt that you can't just push your way through work stress, it has to be taken seriously and guarded against.
Well, back to my longed for Indian trip, we arrived in Delhi on a rainy cold night in January, not realising that North India does have a winter too.
After breathtakingly beautiful tours of the Tah Mahal, the palaces of Jaipur and the forts of Delhi we arrived at Ranthambore for our safari drives through the Indian dry forests and ruined palaces which had been left to the jungles. We rather scoffed at tour members who only seemed interested in spotting tigers as we loved every moment of the bouncy dusty drives in which we saw three kinds of deer, two kinds of monkey 🐒 and the most stunningly beautiful birds you could ever imagine.
However after our third safari we began to get the "tiger bug". We had just one more safari to go before moving on to a hotel in a Maharaja's palace near a wonderful bird wetland and we wanted to see a tiger as much as the next man. Infact we were desperate to see one!! The safari was running to a close and a disappointed silence had descended when suddenly we began to hear the telltale alarm calls of the birds and the barks of the spotted deer. Our driver drove at dizzying speed, tyres screeching to the palace ruins by the lake, where a tiger was reported on the radio. We pulled up, first jeep to arrive and the magnificent beast strolled nonchalantly amongst the ruins, glancing up at where the chipmunks chattered, completely ignoring our vehicle. It was almost the most magical moment of my life as we all sat still, cameras clicking to watch this beautiful tigress stroll past the Jeep as if we didn't exist.
What an experience, I can't describe how powerful it was. Ranthambore are doing an amazing job in helping to ensure this magnificent beast does not go extinct due to poachers and loss of habitat. This is done by ensuring that this area of dry forest in North India is kept wild and protected so it supports a small but growing number of breeding tigers as well as a wide range of other magnificent flora and fauna.
Do write about an amazing holiday experience you have had if you feel like it. It doesn't have to be about wildlife. It has certainly cheered me up remembeing and retelling this story and I hope you have enjoyed or at least been distracted reading it.
Very best wishes
Kim
