May 03, 2010 03:23 PM
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Ranthambore Tiger Reserve is located near the historic town of Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan. Ever since my associated with WWF for Nature, India I was always keen to make a visit to a wild life sanctuary and see the wild animals in their natural habitat. In the summer holidays of 2009, I finally made my plans for the visit to Ranthambore.
On reaching Sawai Madhopur, we boarded a local auto rickshaw and reached our hotel. The hotel Manager Mr.Raj Kumar greeted us and we realized that our group was the only one to have stay at the hotel for the next 2 days. We not only got a rousing welcome but excellent warmth and hospitality all through our stay at the hotel. We were served with simple but sumptuous veg food and butter milk for most of the time at the hotel.
The same evening we were taken in a gypsy to the Ranthambore Fort located inside the national park. From the base, we had a climb for about 30 minutes to reach the top. A ganesh mandir is located here and folks from the adjoining villages come here every day in large numbers, particularly Wednesday as on this day the main puja is conducted here. After the darshan, on our way back we could see the huge banyan tree and the panoramic view of the padam talao lake. All through our journey, we could see plenty of deers – both cheetal and sambar, peacocks, black faced monkey, large eagles and peacocks
Our safari was scheduled for next day early morning at 6 a.m. As we began our journey, we could spot deers drinking water from the water holes and the neelgai(blue bull).
Apart from looking at the flora and fauna, all our eyes were looking for the majestic tiger that was still evading us. Our driver and guide could spot few tiger pug marks indicating they had just passed through that area. We continued our travel through the dense deciduous forest and just then one member from our canter spotted a tiger. We immediately stopped and realized that two tigers were resting in the dry grasslands. One tiger then started lazily walking and we slowly followed it. We realized that the tiger was about to visit the adjoining pond and that’s what exactly happened. The whole episode lasting for about 20 minutes was simply awesome as we all took pictures, videos of the tiger cooling itself in the water before it finally disappeared in the woods.
On our return from the national park, we checked our souvenir shops and collected tiger post cards, T- shirts for our kids and a nice wildlife documentary on a VCD. After lunch we rested in our hotel room listening to the chirping sound of the birds and in the evening we visited the historic town of Sawai Madhopur. The next day we just rested and roamed around the villages and an open deer park feeling fully satisfied with our visit to the park. We were tipped with the information that a tiger could see sighted just along the road on the way to the fort. Our hotel manager quickly arranged for a gypsy and we could visit and see a cute tiger with a radio collar around its neck resting under a tree.
Finally it was time to bid adieu to Ranthambore that night as we boarded the train for the return journey to Mumbai. Ranthambore has about 35 odd tiger population till date and one of the successful project tiger sites in the country. We would strongly recommend to all wild life lovers to definitely visit this place once in their lifetime.
