Tue, Dec1: Kanha

This morning’s game drive was a repetition of both drives the previous day.  The scenery was beautiful...

there were lots of deer including sambar, chital (spotted deer) and barasingha (swamp deer), including a big herd...

lots of black-faced langurs,

and a wide variety of birds...

including peacocks.

We had a mid-morning stop at a visitor's center in the park.  They had a huge arch made from the deer antlers.  No deers were killed to make the arch...all of the antlers had been shed.

This afternoon was our sixth tiger hunting drive (if you count Panna).  

Fields on the way to the national park

We saw more deer... 

and more birds,

Cormorant

but the tiger story was entirely different from yesterday.

With only an hour and a half or so of time remaining on our game drive we were beginning to think our first day would be our only tiger sighting.  However, while driving along the road the Naturalist all of a sudden yelled "Tiger" and pointed to our left.  There was in fact a tiger walking through the meadow at some distance from the road.  We took a few photos and then the Naturalist took off for a rapid (and very bumpy ride) to another road that the tiger was heading towards.  Once stopped the Naturalist pointed to a small ridge area and indicated the tiger should come out on the right side of the ridge (apparently the tigers are often pretty predictable in the routes they take…helps a lot on the tiger sightings). 

Sure enough, a few minutes later the spotted deer all went on high alert as we saw heads pop up over the grass everywhere and ears perking up.  And eventually you could see the tiger moving through the grass.  

Alert deer and uninterested tiger.

The Naturalist said he looked like he had eaten recently so the tiger ignored all the deer and kept moving.  He paralleled the road for a while and then cut directly in front of the jeeps, no more than about 20 feet away.  Huge male, massive and beautiful.

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Of course, one sighting wasn’t enough.  We had been joined by one other jeep and once the tiger was out of sight the Naturalists and guides conferred and agreed that the tiger was likely headed for the river…so they restarted the jeeps and powered down the road for an even bumpier, dustier, faster ride to the river road.  Sure enough, the tiger had just entered the river road as we arrived. 

We followed him for a while before he cut back into the heavy forest underbrush.  WHAT A TREAT!!!

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In response to a question the previous day, our Naturalist described his best ever close up sighting of a tiger in the four years he had been working at Kanha.  Today he said he now had a new best sighting.  This was a very long one and very close.  Usually the close ones are a road crossing from one heavily forested area to the other…one to five minutes at best.  We must have had 20 or 30 minutes total watching this guy.  We were really lucky.  And an awesome, perfect way to end our trip in India.

On the way back to the hotel we saw another herd of spotted deer, a bit anticlimactic but still worth a stop for pictures.

However, not to be upstaged by tigers, the hotel had more special treatments for us when we returned to the hotel.  Upon our arrival we had the usual two handed welcome waves from everyone, along with hot towels and hot drink.  However, this time our butler (yes, we had an official butler) escorted us to our room.  When we entered the room, there were lots of little votive candles lining a “path” from the front door, into the bathroom to the tub, which was again filled with a bubble bath.  This time it was sprinkled with marigold buds and hibiscus blossoms.  And we had two “mocktails” waiting for us.  He then took us to the deck where they had set up a table for dinner for two under the stars with candlelight and lanterns to light the area. 

What a glorious end to a great six week trip in Incredible India.  Tomorrow we drive to Jabalpur, then fly to Delhi and then fly to the US...40+ hours.  Totally worth it.