GURRRR ??

  After our lovely stay in Jaipur, Dan and I decided to take a detour from our scheduled itinerary to the railway town of Sawai Madhopur.  We were enticed by the possibility of seeing Bengal Tigers in one of their few remaining wild habitats.
We arrived in the town in the middle of the afternoon heat.  With the frustration of our train trip still residing and the hot afternoon sun beating down on us, we walked and searched for a place to stay for the night.  Needless to say, the tigers in this town are a huge draw for tourist, which translates to high costs for food and lodging.  After we checked out some prospects, we decided on a hotel and parked our things.  It was dirty, smelly, the toilet leaked ( a lot! ), power was minimal and the mosquitos were abundant.  On the bright side, we did practise our ninja stealth skills as we battled the mosquitos in an two day blood bath – we won :)
We booked ourselves a seat on a Canter ( a bus with no roof ) for the early morning safari.  While the sun still slept, we rubbed the sleep out of our eyes, stumbled into our clothes and waited for our tour guide to pick us up.  After picking up the remainder of the 19 total guests on our tour, we hit the park for our 7:00 am safari.
The Ranthambore National Park Reserve is an expansive, beautiful, lush park, with 5 trail options for both Gypsies ( Jeeps ) and Canters to tour around in hopes of seeing tigers, deer, wildcats, leopards, lizards and birds.  Trails are rotated and distributed to the drivers at random; ours received trail 2.  We set out on our three hour tour of the park and the ride was BUMPY.  It made it virtually impossible to take photos, but on the bright side, there would be no falling asleep on this ride :)  What can I say, the park was GLORIOUS.  It was a maze of beautiful trees ( most of which I have never seen ) grassy plains, cliffs, rivers and old crumbling forts!  Along with what Dan has named ‘ The Albino Puzzle Tree ‘, we also had the pleasure of seeing the second oldest Banyan tree in India- at 1000 years old!!  MAGNIFICENT.  I could have just curled up in it’s roots and lived there, perfectly happy for the rest of my life :)
Now, don’t get me wrong, the park and wildlife we did see (birds, deer and monkeys) were beautiful but we came to see tigers and the star of the show had yet to arrive :(  Huh- I forgot to mention one thing…….

When we arrived in the ( awful ) town of Sawai Madhopur we were greeted by every sort of tiger paraphernalia one could imagine.  There were tiger paintings, posters, tiger print everywhere and pretty much every establishment name had the word tiger in it!  Now, this kinda gives a person the impression that tiger sights are abundant- not the case :(  After our tour we were informed that they are actually very rare, a person could go on 10 safaris and never see one- lovely…
Now, we were fast approaching the end of our tour and we hadn’t seen a tiger, no one had, not a single vehicle we crossed paths with looked hopeful.  Now, I’m a fairly positive person, but my bubble was burst.  What a waste of time and money for the detour we had made to see these stupid illusive creatures :(
Then, peaking out from the trees- we saw something!!  A TIGER!!!  He was BEAUTIFUL, MAGESTIC, REGAL and sooooo close.  As Dan put it ‘ he was so close, he could have bitten off my head!’  We followed him as he- in perfect cat fashion, strolled onto the path, found a tree, sprayed it and squatted right in front of our cantor.  Have you ever seen a tiger take a crap in the wild? – we have :)  Then we spent the next few minutes watching him, in all his glory, make his way back up the ridge from where he came!!  BRILLIANT!  Now, in my excitement, I didn’t capture many photos but Dan did record a super bad ass video, which we will try to post at a later date.
The experience was a once in a lifetime opportunity I won’t soon forget.  We were the only vehicle to see a tiger that day, actually we were the celebrity white folks that ‘ saw tiger ‘.  I don’t know about you but I think that is pretty good luck ;)  Thank you tiger!  You are beautiful and brilliant!!