India is full of tigers; the country is crazy about them. You see them everywhere: on giant painted arches straddling the road, in temple iconography, on shop fronts, statues, bank notes and souvenirs. There are tigers made from paper, plastic, stone, metal and paint as well as intangible beasts, rooted in myths and legends, intrinsically entwined for centuries with the Indian psyche: Hindu goddess Durga kills demons and other evildoers from the back of one animal. In short, the largest cat of them all is the national animal of India. But these magnificent animals are in grave danger.
At 5:35am, we’re already standing at the entrance to Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve. A large painted tiger addresses us from a sign beside the gate. “Dear friends, whether or not you see me in the wild depends on chance. If you are determined to see me, that can lead to disappointment. For this reason I ask you to enjoy the park in its entirety.” It’s a noble aspiration, and we won’t complain about seeing deer or wild pigs, but we won’t get too crazy about them either. After a seemingly endless series of flights, bus rides and hurried connections, we were desperate to see just one of these regal animals.
A second catchphrase was somewhat more inspiring and issued from the lips of every guide and guard we met: “In all the other parks you are lucky if you see a tiger. But in Bandhavgarh you are unlucky if you don’t see at least one.” This is, after all, the reserve with highest concentration of wild tigers in the world. The 1,131-square-kilometre park contains 54 of them: so many that it is actually on the tight side for animals that like to roam. If you don’t find tigers here, you won’t find them anywhere.
We climbed onto the back seat of a jeep and moved bumpily into the park. This was our second safari. The first, shortly after our arrival the previous afternoon, had produced nothing. We’d waited for an hour by a deer carcass without any tiger arriving to claim it as dinner. It had rained constantly. Frustratingly, a young Arab couple who we’d met over lunch had seen a tigress with two cubs that very morning. For an hour and a half. In the sunshine.
Besides a large dose of envy, this revelation also gave us hope. After an hour spent driving around peering through the foliage, we received news. Tiger news. The mahouts, the elephant drivers who can travel away from the jeep roads and have the advantage of being able to look down from high saddles, had seen a tiger with its latest kill. The tiger’s meal was just a few metres off the road. But it didn’t really matter where it was - it was only our second safari and we were eager to get going. “Chalo,” the guide said: “Let’s go!”
We drove at full speed to the reported location; arriving somewhat breathlessly, we slowly drove forward until we were just twenty metres from the tiger and its prey. “Puss puss puss puss puss!” the photographer whispered, as he peered through his long lens. “Click click click click click,” went the shutter, every time we caught a glimpse.
Usually we saw no more than a pair of ears, a sharp canine tooth, or a black-rimmed eye. The tiger was in no hurry, and was concentrating its attention on its dinner: a chital, a small spotted deer. Our naturalist guide Mahendre stood up and peered through his binoculars. “It is Shesha,” he said softly. “A young male, the upcoming alpha animal in the park.”
Mahendre had worked in Bandhavgarh for eight years and could recognise all the tigers from the patterns on their fur. He gazed into the dense undergrowth, just as mesmerised as we are, even though he must have seen this hundreds of times. A deer. A tiger. A kill. Repeat. But the passion was clearly visible in his eyes every time an animal crossed our path. Not long ago he had tried to set up a programme to reintroduce the Asiatic lion into the reserve. But without success - the local bureaucracy wouldn’t cooperate. “Politics kills more tigers than poachers,” he sighed. Once, he said sadly, there was as much biodiversity here as on the African savannah. Lions, rhinoceroses and cheetah all roamed the area. Now there were all gone. And the tiger is also in danger. He knows exactly how many remain: “1,141, in the whole of India. That’s half what there were a few years ago.”
Shesha had eaten enough, and with a full stomach he walked into shot for the dozen onlookers. Click click click, zoom zoom, click click click. I used a telephoto lens as binoculars, and when the animal looked up, I was staring him right in the eye. Golden brown, curious eyes with long lashes. Click. For half an hour Shesha posed, sometimes a fearsome carnivore, at other times as sprightly and innocent as a tabby in a TV cat food commercial. White stomach, pink nose, deep black stripes, piercing whiskers, everything on an orange-brown canvas. Shesha was also watching us. Staring back at our hushed excitement, those calm, aureate eyes were so peaceful, almost serene; to him we were just large animals on wheels. Then he squatted, defecated, and walked out of sight. The sound of laughter filled the air.
Now that a tiger had shown itself, the beauty of the other animals began to shine through. Packs of spotted chital grazed in the companionship of hoelmans, little monkeys with long curling tails and black faces, which shriek loudly when danger is near, and so act as an early warning alarm service for the forest. A cobra slithered over the road. Sambar, nilgai, wailing peacock and barking muntjac deer dotted the forest floor and grasslands, while doves, parakeets and kingfishers flew through the air. They were all peaceful, but also always watchful – after all, this was tiger country.
When we saw another tiger that same afternoon, we felt like we’d hit the jackpot. It was B2, the king of the park. We found this immense specimen bathing in a small pond and slowly closed the distance. It was tempting to imagine him in a Jungle Book context: here sits Shere Khan, the brooding giant that fears no other animal save Mowgli, the man child, because he knows he will one day grow up to become a creature with fire and weapons.
Sadly, Kipling’s fantasy has become reality. Before Bandhavgarh became a reserve, it was a shikargah, a hunting ground for the maharajah and his guests. Hunting has been banned since 1968, but poaching continues to this day. Poached tigers are stripped down just like a stolen car, and sold in parts. The skin is highly sought-after as a symbol of power, and the organs and bones are used in traditional medicines in countries such as China, Taiwan and Tibet. Tiger eyes are used to prevent epilepsy, the brain wards off idleness, the tail protects against cancer, and the penis against impotence. One kilo of tiger bones (the skeleton of an adult tiger weighs around 18 kilos), during undercover research in 1999, fetched no less than 25,000 dollars on the border of China and Vietnam. The skin of an adult male tiger was worth 1.2 million dollars. And that was a decade ago. Nowadays there are fewer animals on sale, and the buyers are richer.
This is a source of constant concern for people like Mahendre. A live tiger population can generate far more money in the long term than one that has been ground down into medicine. But try explaining that to a villager who has to provide a dowry for his daughter’s wedding. Or a poor farmer who watches his cattle fall prey to a hungry cat. A lucrative tourist industry that also helps the local population is, however, a convincing argument. The Jungle Lodge, where we stayed, does its part by hiring its staff from among the local population. Even the ingredients for all the dishes that were served up to us daily were also sourced locally.
The Tiger Corridor has also been set up this way. This luxury resort is located in the second reserve on our route: Kanha. The national park was recently declared the best managed nature reserve in Asia, and is considered the flagship of Project Tiger, a government scheme set up in the 1970s when it became clear that tigers were on the brink of extinction. The project initially had far-reaching success, but over time the number of tigers continued to decline, and some now say the big cats’ days are again numbered.
However, the rise in eco-tourism in Kanha might offer a permanent solution that is for once grounded in reality. It boosts the local economy by generating income from visitors: around 200,000 Indians visit the park annually. The money raised is invested in biogas plants in the neighbouring villages, which means the local population no longer needs to enter the park illegally in order to cut down trees for use as fuel. There is also a programme that compensates farmers if their cattle are killed by a tiger, which prevents the farmers taking revenge against the animals.
After a quick breakfast of biscuits and masala chai (tea with milk and spices), we drove into the park. Here too we saw tigers on our first safari, as well as an enormous quantity of prey animals. The watchful guide could spot animals even through the densest stands of bamboo. He growled, barked, whistled and coughed, dependent on which animal he saw. Speaking the animal world’s own local dialect, he made the tigers’ ears prick up with the bark of a stag, like a dog’s owner rattling a box of biscuits.
After so many hours bumping around in a jeep, the evening brought relief in the form of a wonderful Ayurvedic massage in the Tiger Corridor’s spa. I chose a special treatment: Shiro Dhara. This was the speciality of a centuries-old massage form from the south of India. After a full body massage, warm fragrant oil was poured on my forehead. The relaxing effect was noticeable almost immediately: my thoughts sank into a shimmering arena in which all the impressions of the previous week passed by in review. The verdant greenness of the landscape after the first monsoon rains. The fragrant smell of the wet jungle. The crickets chirping in the night; the rain pattering on the tent. Playful monkeys, barking deer, and the penetrating stare of Shesha. When the goddess Durga suddenly raced through my imagination on the back of Shere Kahn, I knew the Ayurvedic treatment had achieved its aim: opening my ‘third eye’. It was a good way to end; the green heart of India had awakened my senses.
CONTACT
The Tiger Corridor,
Tuli Tiger Resort,
Pench National Park,
Noida, India
Tel + 91 120 405261198
www.penchnationalpark.com
