May 18, 2004 01:03 AM
8576 Views
(Updated May 18, 2004 01:03 AM)
Kanha National Park in the Mandla District spreads over 1,945 sq.km of dense sal forests, interspersed with extensive meadows and trees and clumps of wild bamboo. This area known as Kipling Country' is where all the jungle books of Rudyard Kipling were conceived.
It is, after all, my first day in a wildlife sanctuary. We are in Kanha, one of India?s best sanctuaries in which to see the tiger, arguably this country?s most magnificent animal, in the wild. At 7 pm, as a red sun heads home and animal cries start to fade, our jeep splutters to a dead halt. We are still 14 kilometres from the nearest exit. Our driver pokes around the shrubbery and produces a bleak brown twig. Every other jeep has already left the forest. He tightens his woollen scarf around his head and pokes the twig into the fuel tank.
A cold silence descends over our huddled group of six. He brings up the twig?it has no stains on it, not even on the bottom: we are clean out of diesel and must walk ourselves out of here. Accompanied by total darkness, blood-curdling roars and speculative comments. ''That must be two tigers fighting in the nullah.'' ''Arre, one must be wounded.'' Three hours and a million glances-over-my-shoulder later, I re-emerge as the human being that I usually am.
That was 1989, more than a decade ago. Since then, I have travelled to several wildlife sanctuaries in and around India: from Chitwan in the terai grasslands of Nepal to Periyar, way down south. In Ranthambhore, a tiger once used our jeep as cover to stalk a sambar stag in full view of 15 jeeploads of tourists and innumerable whirring cameras?which probably explains why the tigers of Ranthambhore are regarded as ?friendly?. In Bandhavgarh, a tigress and two full-grown cubs sprang right over our heads while crossing the narrow path where we were parked.
In Kanha, a group of elephants ringed a tiger so he couldn?t escape, while another elephant ferried tourists for a quick peek. I was one of them, but the moment made me sad: why turn the hunter into the hunted for a few moments of weekend sport?
For some people, a sanctuary is a chance to see the tiger. Sanctuary = Tiger. For others, it is an opportunity to study a rare species, such as the great Indian bustard. And for others, a sanctuary means the radio must be blasted. I come somewhere in between the tiger and the bustard. Yes, the thrill of seeing a tiger never fades, but with time, I have come to appreciate the subtler charms of being in the jungle.
One of these charms is the experience itself, an experience that begins, alas, all too early. Five o?clock in the morning is when a winter day in the jungle begins (4.30 in the summer), that dreaded moment when a knock on the door means it?s time for the morning ride. With only a cup of tea as fortification, the bleary self emerges into the dark night, head and ears cocooned from the cold in a dark shawl.
The first hour is sheer hell, with the wind slicing past the tips of your frozen ears, and nary a mouse in sight. But as the sun starts to rise, the forest emerges in a quiet solitary way. A chital here, a sloth bear there. An Indian gaur or bison displaying his manhood. This is not the forest of the afternoon, when the warmth of the sun beckons herds of blackbucks to gambol and frolic in the vast maidans of Kanha, or when peacocks lazily pose in the cupolas at Ranthambhore. This is the jungle waking up, slowly, silently, without histrionics, a process that builds till the winter sun finally starts to toast your cramped body.
The winter sun. What is a wildlife sanctuary without sun? or without bacon and eggs in the sun? If the jungle experience is all about unlearning old city rhythms, it is also about savouring the quiet pleasure of being. I once spent an entire day on the balcony of Jogi Mahal, a former hunting lodge in Ranthambhore overlooking a marshy lake where a tiger and crocodile once battled over a sambar deer in broad daylight. The tiger finally won, but that?s another story.
