Tiger Hunt

An open-topped Mazda, one of the designated government canters allowed inside the Ranthambore forest reserve, arrived at our hotel on schedule at 2pm to pick us up. Our guide, a tall young man named Altaf, was standing inside, holding tight to a railing, his eyes peeled as if he expected a few tigers to emerge from the hotel with us.

Mohit and I got in the front alongside the middle-aged driver who seemed to be a veteran of many such trips. The canter quickly filled up with an assortment of excited young couples and foreign tourists we collected from various luxurious resorts on the way. Some were carrying binoculars and a few even had tele-lenses attached to their digital cameras.

Mohit and I had earlier cycled to Ranthambore from Jaipur and gone up to the beautiful fort inside the reserve. Usually we head straight home after our cycling trips, but this time, since we had time on our hands, we decided to give the safari a try.

The forest area covered around 400 sq km and was divided into five zones. We made our way into Zone Four, where apparently tigers were spotted earlier in the day. We drove slowly through the lush forest, scanning every inch for any movement.

Suddenly our guide screamed for the vehicle to stop. All eyes followed his pointed finger and I saw a couple of rodents disappear into the undergrowth. “Mongooses,” he said reverently. “Not one, but two. According to Rajasthani folk wisdom, seeing a pair of mongooses during the start of a journey is a good omen.”

Cheered by this extraordinary slice of good luck, we continued on our way, the canter groaning as it negotiated dirt tracks, lurching wildly like a drunk on his way home. Once we stopped and took a long look at a deer that was spotted, which our conscientious guide identified as a spotted deer. A few minutes later, we halted and gazed at a few noisy parrots.

After an hour or so, people were tired of taking pictures of birds and they had enough of deer, spotted or otherwise. The possibility that the tigers of Ranthambore were lying low dawned on us, though no one said it aloud.

Good fortune, though, was around the corner. The mongooses, it seemed, were blessing us after all. We met a canter on its way back, filled with beaming people who looked like they had won lotteries. The excited guide of theirs assured us that there were tigers ahead and if we climbed a hill nearby, we too could see them.

Our driver, who was somnolently going through the motions, transformed into a DTC bus driver. We clung on for dear life as the Mazda thundered through the forest, skidding and swerving past trees whose branches grazed our arms. The couples behind us screamed and whooped.

Years ago, the Maharajas rode on elephants hunting tigers with their shotguns. Now, here we were in our 4x4 with our zoom lenses, charging through the forest, adrenaline pumping, on our own tiger hunt.

Soon, we were on top of the hill only to discover that there was quite a traffic jam up there. A half a dozen canters and many jeeps were jostling for space – it seemed all the tourists of Ranthambore were assembled and staring through their binoculars and tele-lenses.

I had expected the tigers to be walking up and down, posing like models on a ramp. I was quickly disillusioned. As we squeezed into a space between two jeeps, I looked across at the valley and examined it closely. To my naked eye, it seemed devoid of any big cats. A man from the nearby jeep informed us that the tigers were in the open earlier but now had gone under the cover of the trees.

A bespectacled young man from our canter claimed to spot one. “I can see it,” he exclaimed. “What does it look like?” asked the man next to him with the binoculars.

“Yellow with black stripes,” replied the wise bespectacled one.

All of us peered intently.

“Look, I can see its tail wagging,” the bespectacled man added.

“I can see it too,” said another man, who looked like a corporate big shot, quietly from under his straw hat.

The man with the binoculars was making no progress. “I can’t see anything. You must have great eyes,” he told Straw Hat.

“God given gift,” muttered Straw Hat modestly.

The man with the binoculars passed the equipment to his excited wife who looked all around with it. “I can’t see it either,” she whined.

All this while our guide was looking very distressed, as he too hadn’t seen anything. Now, with the help of the driver, he spotted it too. “Follow my finger”, he screeched jumping up and down, “Look where I am pointing. It is a tigress. With two cubs! Next to the trees near the cactus shrub.”

I looked hard into the distance. I saw many trees. I saw plenty of cacti. I didn’t see any tigress or cubs. I looked at Mohit who shook his head. “Nothing.”

The wife with the binoculars exclaimed, “I can see a black spot. Is the black spot the tigress?”

“That’s her mouth,” said the guide.

“It’s got deer meat in her mouth,” added the bespectacled one who wanted to be back in the limelight.

“I think it’s spotted deer,” said Straw Hat, not to be outdone.

I still couldn't see anything remotely resembling a tigress.

“The tigress has moved and is now sitting inside the cluster of those tall bushes,” said our guide, who seemed to have suddenly developed X-ray vision. “The cubs are to the left of her.”

“A sitting tiger doesn’t get up easily,” said the driver philosophically and proceeded to chew some pan.

Mohit, who was sneakily taking pictures of people looking at the tigress, now abandoned all stealth and clambered onto the canter’s railings and started shooting them like paparazzi.

“There are hundreds of pictures of tigers on the internet,” he said to me, “but I bet there aren’t any good ones of people looking for tigers. I can sell these to Getty Images.”

As the light started to fade, the canters began turning back. We were the last one to go, reluctantly leaving the tigress and her cubs behind.

The people inside our vehicle convinced themselves that they had seen the tigress and the cubs. The couple with the binoculars thanked God for making it their lucky day. The bespectacled man and Straw Hat argued about the kind of meat it was feeding on.

For Mohit and I, the cycling trip was the high point and though we enjoyed the safari ride through the forest, neither of us saw the endangered cats. Maybe we too would’ve had better stories to tell if we had visited Ranthambore just as tourists.