India Day 13 and Final Thoughts

I woke up the next morning, had a standard hotel complimentary breakfast, and then waited for Amy to drive up from KC to retrieve me. It was more wonderful than I can say to see her again, and the bad weather had cleared the area before we made the trip back home.

So there you have the saga of my first experience with international travel. The blog entries were written a month or so after the fact and back-dated to put them in proper chronological location and order. The entries are based on 73 pages of notes and 3,924 photos.

Just sorting through the pictures took quite some time. Eventually I managed to settle on 14 of the best images for my portfolio.

I want to thank On Track Safaris in the UK and India Footprints in India for providing me with one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Also a quick thank you to Responsible Travel for serving as the way I found On Track.

Most of the places where I experienced discomfort during the trip were due to my inexperience as a traveler. For example, the Jabalpur airport shouldn’t have been anywhere near as nerve-racking as it was for me. Now that I know what to expect from such experiences, hopefully I’ll be less nervous traveling in the future.

Indeed, for the most part the uncertain moments worked out for the best. For example, my original itinerary had me in Bandhavgarh first and Kanha second. But going to Kanha first was much better. There I had Uday Patel’s expert guidance and a much calmer experience than I had at the second park. But by the time I got to Bandhavgarh I was much better prepared for the experience, even without a naturalist to help me. And after being so close to those tigers, Kanha might have been a bit anti-climactic, which it definitely shouldn’t have been.

However, I do want to note two big negatives for the sake of any readers who might wish to benefit from my experiences. First, I absolutely will never ever ever do business with Travelocity ever again. If you haven’t read my blog entry about what happened with that whole mess, please study it carefully before you ever trust your travel plans to that “service.”

And second, India (especially the rural parts of the country) is the land of cash. My card didn’t work at all. Fortunately, I exchanged enough currency to cover tips and other expenses. And most of the big stuff (hotels, transport, most of the food) was already covered by the tour package.

When I did the currency exchange in Toronto, I got such a huge pile of bills that I felt bad about how much money I was carrying. But I was down to financial fumes by the end of the trip. So the lesson there is to get more money than you need and don’t get freaked out when you walk away from the currency exchange counter with a Scrooge McDuck sized wad of cash.

My sole regret from the trip was not taking even more pictures than I did. That said, I have to remind myself that if I stopped long enough to take good photos of everything I saw that would have made a good photo, I’d still be there taking pictures.

Looking back, India might have been sort of a crazy choice for the first trip taken by a 53-year-old man who never even had a passport prior to a few months ago. I do wish I’d worried less and relaxed more, which might have been easier in more familiar surroundings. But I think what I really needed was exactly what I got: a total break from the familiar and a beautiful place full of fantastic photo opportunities. I’m glad I went. I’ll treasure the photos and the memories for the rest of my life. And now I feel ready for any other opportunity for adventure that might come my way.

India Day 12

The flight arrived in Newark around 4 a.m. Customs was much smoother and more polite than in India, even at that dark hour of the morning. I had to retrieve and re-check my non-carry-on, and of course my flight to KC was scheduled to depart from the farthest possible spot on the concourse. But I had some time, so no big deal.

Except it turned out I had a lot more time than I counted on. Bad weather back home delayed the flight. And then the KC-bound plane was up in the air and halfway home before they announced that KCI was closed, the flight was canceled, and we were going back to Newark. Plus we had to fly around aimlessly for another two hours to burn enough fuel to make the plane light enough to land.

After a long wait back in the airport, I finally got to talk to a United Airlines customer service clerk. She started by telling me, “You have a few options. First, we can fly you to Omaha today ...” and at that point I replied “Done. Omaha it is.”

So Omaha it was. One positive side effect of all this taking off and landing is that air travel now seems positively old hat and more than a little boring. So I’m hoping I won’t have any trouble with it in the future.

The flight arrived in the early evening. Of course my checked bag was still in Newark, so I filed the paperwork and got a taxi to the hotel I reserved online while still in New Jersey.

By the time I checked in, got China Express from Door Dash and finally settled in for the night, I’d been awake (other than dozing on the plane) for nearly 50 hours straight.

India Day 11

I’m in Delhi once again, so of course it’s raining. At the start of the trip I intended to get some sight seeing in today, but at this point I’m exhausted, out of cash and not mentally up to much more big city traffic. So I had a quiet breakfast and then got a ride to the airport.

Or to be more precise, there was a mix-up about when I was being picked up. So I ended up sitting in the lobby for awhile before we got the schedule figured out. The grandfather clock in the lobby had a really pretty chime, and the manager of the lounge took pity on me, opened a little early and set the TV to CNN for me.

As my flight wasn’t until later in the evening, I had a long sit at the airport. The sitting part was okay, as I had email to get caught up on and some reading to do. And certainly there was no shortage of people watching and even some interesting art.

Customs, on the other hand, was a nightmare. At one point they literally had no clerks working on the long line of international passport holders.

Photographic proof

Then the security checkpoint made me unpack my carry-on because it contained cameras. I recognize that I’m not exactly a seasoned international traveler, but that’s the first time I’ve ever heard of cameras mistaken for weapons or other contraband.

Somewhere in the flurry of unpacking and re-packing I managed to lose my Kindle, which was super upsetting.

At least clearing customs finally gave me access to the food court (it was mid evening at this point and I hadn’t eaten an actual meal since breakfast). Many of the options seemed targeted specifically at homesick Americans. I loved my time in India and would gladly return someday. But I have to admit that was the best-tasting Filet-o-Fish value meal I ever had.

Then at the gate everyone on my flight had to go through another security check, presumably because the first one didn’t meet US standards (they let us keep our shoes on, for starters). So everyone who bought water for the flight now lost their bottles, and once past the second check there was nowhere to get anything else to drink.

The plane was another Boeing 777, this one slightly older than the one on the way to India. There was no air valve to get a comforting breeze going, and my seatback screen didn’t work for awhile. Once the flight attendant got it up and running again I couldn’t figure out how to connect headphones to it. So I watched movies with English subtitles for hours, dozing here and there.

India Day Ten

From this point forward my account of the trip features no more fabulous wildlife encounters, and it resumes its status as a standard travelogue.

This morning I finally lost the battle to eat everything I was served, proving unequal to the massive breakfast in the outdoor restaurant area. As I’d settled my bill and packed my bags the night before, I was ready to go when the driver picked me up at 10. Farewell Bandhavgarh! What a magnificent place!

The drive back to Jabulpur was fairly uneventful. We were stopped for awhile at a railroad crossing, an interesting experience as the crossings are controlled by guys in a booth rather than automatic sensors. The road was closed for a few minutes prior to the actual arrival of the train, which I suppose was due to the potential hazards of having a traffic jam stuck on the tracks when the high-speed, non-stop train came through.

We got to the city around 1 p.m., encountering what I think was the same monkey colony I noted on the outskirts when I left town days ago. Shortly thereafter the driver left the main road and wound through back alleys and dirt tracks up a hill. I began to wonder what kind of airport might be found at the end of such a trek.

The Jabalpur airport reminded me a great deal of a bus station or maybe the main setting from the old TV movie Raid on Entebbe (only with fewer terrorists and Israeli commandos). I’d only ever been in sizeable airports before, so this was a new and not entirely welcome experience. The air in the terminal was hot, dry and still. The plane was more than an hour late, and the waiting area slowly went from deserted and silent to crowded and noisy. I had only a limited idea of what to do or where to go. My fancy new Apple watch helpfully informed me that my heart rate got up to 120 bpm sitting still, which is low intensity exercise level for me.

I was flying SpiceJet, which I’d never heard of. Their slogan: Red. Hot. Spicy. Not sure how that relates to air travel, but I figured at least with “jet” in the name that we wouldn’t be flying a propeller aircraft.

Nope. Not only was it not a jet, but all the passengers had to pile onto shuttle buses to travel from the terminal to the tarmac. The new experiences just keep coming!

Honestly it turned out to be an okay experience. The poor woman sitting next to me had a rough time of it, muttering a prayer or mantra the whole time the plane descended into Delhi. But we all made it just fine, bused once again from the plane to the same terminal where I arrived last week.

The ride from the airport to the hotel at night was surreal. It was an amazing blend of 21st century technology and ancient architecture, of high fashion billboards and people cooking food on sidewalk campfires. It reminded me a little of Syd Mead’s design work for Blade Runner.

My last hotel in India was the Ashok Country Resort, which despite its name wasn’t far from the airport. It struck me as the sort of place that had been quite luxurious when first built, though a bit decayed here and there now. The staff was very polite and helpful, and my one night there was comfortable. And it was certainly good to be back in the land of WiFi!

India – The Birds

I admit that I didn’t travel halfway around the world to take pictures of birds. Kansas is fairly short on tigers in the wild, but we have birds in abundance.

However, what began as a series of photos taken mostly to fill down time between other sights became a genuine fascination. It was impossible to not be affected by the simple beauty of the parks’ many avian residents. As a result, several of my portfolio pieces turned out to be bird photos.

Maybe I should give the birds back home a fairer opportunity, too.

The birds were hard to keep track of as I went. The naturalist and guides were good about telling me what I was looking at, but I wasn’t equally good at writing things down right away. Thus I am greatly indebted to my Aunt Kathy who went through the portfolio photos, figured out what the subjects were, and even sent links to their ebird entries, which include recordings of their songs.

The bird in the photo above is a red-wattled lapwing. The colors reflected in the water are from one of the Bandhavgarh plateaus in the background.

This is a bay-backed shrike.

This is a white-throated kingfisher (I actually did get a note jotted about him).

This is an Indian roller, which was even more beautiful in flight (though the photos weren’t as good).

The guide identified this as an Indian owlet. I’ll let y’all make the call for yourselves.

Serpent eagles were frequent sights in the park. I thought perhaps they got their name from their vaguely snake-like heads. But no, apparently it’s because they eat snakes.

And last but certainly not least, this bittern was enjoying a misty early morning in Kanha.

India Day Nine

My last day in the park proved much quieter than its predecessors. Frankly, it was a relief. I’ve seen so many amazing things in the past few days that it’s gotten a little overwhelming. If luck is a finite quality, then it’s time for me to pass my tiger sighting fortune over to another visitor.

In the morning the guide decided to take advantage of the lull in wildlife photo ops to head for the Bandhavgarh Fort plateau. Though the fort itself is off limits, there’s a colossal statue of Lord Vishnu that can be visited, one of the few spots in the park where it’s permissible to get out of the jeep and wander around a little.

The statue was on the side of the plateau, accessible via a series of narrow switchbacks. In addition to some hair-raising moments, the road afforded some interesting views.

At one point we passed a spot where stables for horses had been carved out of the bedrock.

And higher up we passed a similar rock-hewn structure that once upon a time served as a court for tax paying and other official business.

We also passes several ghost trees, so called because their pale bark glows an eerie white in the moonlight.

At the end of the trail was the statue at the top of this post. The main figure is Lord Vishnu reclining on the Sheshnaag, the seven-headed serpent king. A spring emerges from the hillside near his feet, flowing into a pool and from there down the side of the plateau to form a stream in the countryside below.

There are some places that somehow just seem to feel different from ordinary everyday locations. This was one of those. If nothing else, it was awe-inspiring to see a work of art carved from a single piece of rock more than 1000 years ago. I’ve seen art that old and older, but never in its original location.

After that experience we gave up a little early. The afternoon drive was uneventful as well. But as I said, that was actually welcome. It gave me time to contemplate, to process the experiences I’d had on this amazing journey.

Toward sunset we passed a large stork walking around a swampy area not far from the plateau. The guide said it was unusual to see that kind of bird away from herds of cattle or deer. They like to follow the heavier animals through marshy spots because their hoofs stir worms and snails out of the muddy ground. Good eating.

India – Ana

The jeep was stopped at the side of a road that ran between the forest and some open fields. We were listening and waiting, and then suddenly there she was. The guide didn’t know her name, so I decided to call her Ana (from a song by They Might Be Giants).

At first the encounter followed the same pattern as the Solo sighting: the tiger moves through the woods, and jeeps follow. But then Ana made a turn and crossed the road.

She walked right in front of my jeep. I was maybe 15 feet away from her.

Then she entered the tall grass on the other side of the road. The driver sped around to a side road, and we waited to see if she’d enter a clear strip between rows of grass.

She emerged from the grass, crossed the open space and went back into the cover on the other side. There was one more open row to go, and I figured she’d cross it as well and then we’d lose sight of her.

But when she got to the edge of the grass on the far side of the second clear space, I guess she decided the humans hadn’t gotten a good enough look at her. So she ambled up the edge of the grass ...

And crossed the side road, once again super close to me.

From there she moved through the undergrowth until she found a shady spot in a grove of trees. She settled where it was hard to see her, and as the daylight waned we had to leave.

As we pulled away, she started to roar. It was an incredible sound. I’ve tried to find a YouTube video or other source that reproduced what I heard, but nothing quite matches my memory.

EDIT: In early April I friended an Instagram user from India who tells me her official name is Dotty 3, which is also a nice name.

India Day Eight

This morning got off to a slightly bumpy start when I couldn’t figure out how to get hot water in the shower. But I shrugged it off, resolved to try again over lunch when I had more time to mess with it, and got going anyway.

The drive (with a different guide) began where the previous day ended, at a spot I nicknamed Solo Point. I suppose word of yesterday’s encounter spread among the guides, so it was natural enough to see if she was still in the neighborhood.

She wasn’t, but some other interesting denizens were. Just up the road from the point, we saw rangers riding park elephants. I saw some park elephants in Kanha that seemed like they weren’t having a real great time. But these elephants seemed happier and better cared for.

I also took advantage of a pause to take some pictures of the Bandhavgarh Fort plateau.

The fort was the location of the capital for many years, and after the government moved elsewhere, the maharajahs used it as a hunting lodge. Now it’s only open on August 1 every year, and at that time of the summer the park is only open to locals. So alas, no photos from the top.

It was still quite beautiful from the plains, though. Though this isn’t visible in the photo, the guide pointed out white spots on the side of the plateau and said they were vulture nests.

Breakfast at Bandhavgarh was in a crowded spot full of interesting sights, sounds and scents. When we piled into the jeep to hit the trail again, two local girls took the vacant seat behind me.

We went back to more or less where we left off, and before long the guides spotted tigers.

It took considerable maneuvering to get any kind of view of them, and even at best they were distant and difficult to photograph in the shadows. The guide said the pair was two of Solo’s cubs, around 13 months old and looking more like full-grown tigers than cubs to me. As hard as they were to see, it was still amazing to see them.

On the way out of the park I noticed a block with what appeared to be devotional art dedicated to a cobra and a mongoose. It reminded me of the Chuck Jones version of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. And at the same time I imagined the inscription on the side reading, “Watch them shake hands with the devil as they roar through the gates of Hell!” (70s era drag racing joke)

Back at Nature Heritage I got the hot water figured out and had a badly-needed shower. Then when we returned to the park we entered through the second gate rather than where we went in the first two times. The park also had a third gate, but we never went in that way.

Almost immediately we saw a jungle cat in a dry creek bed. This was apparently an exceptionally rare experience. As I saw only one house cat the entire time I was in India, seeing the domestic feline’s wild relative was a particular bit of good luck.

Later that afternoon we passed a field on the park border with a herd of cattle on the other side of a fence. An old man was keeping watch over them, playing a vaguely familiar melody on a flute. Then a little farther down the road we stopped to listen for calls.

All I heard for the longest time was a woodpecker hard at work on a nearby tree.

Then Ana appeared. She too gets her own entry.

After the Ana encounter we drove around the park for awhile. I got a good look at some jackals.

And a really pretty sunset.

Even tea that evening was extraordinary, accompanied by spinach pakoras, which are my favorites.

For dinner that night they added fried chicken and french fries to the bill of fare, special for their American guest.

India – Solo

As described in the Day Seven entry, by the time 5 o’clock or so rolled around, I figured the chances of seeing anything else that afternoon were pretty slim (and the chances of getting a good photo even slimmer). When the guide suggested we move to a new spot, my guess was that we’d be better off just calling it a day.

But I think he may have heard a soft alarm call or something else that tipped him off that there might be a tiger in the area. Because when we went down the road a ways, he spotted her almost immediately.

The tigers of the Bandhavgarh preserve have names and territories, and we were in the part of the park claimed by Solo, a female tiger with five cubs. When we saw her she was living up to her name, though ... well, let me not get ahead of myself.

Once we saw her for certain, the guide made a loud alarm call of his own to let other nearby jeeps know that a tiger had been spotted. At that point she was ambling off into the underbrush, so the driver waited for her to disappear and then drove down the road a ways, paralleling her course.

We didn’t have long to wait at the new location. She emerged from the trees and walked right past the jeep. When I took the photo at the top of this post, I’m guessing she was maybe 25 feet or so away.

I’m writing this entry almost a month later, and I’m still having trouble putting the experience into words. How can I even describe what it’s like to be that close to a tiger on her own terms? I’m awestruck by tigers in zoos, and this was like a zoo multiplied by a million.

She kept walking over to a rocky hillside where the the road ended, rounding the curve of the rocks and setting up camp with the top of her head barely visible.

We waited for awhile to see if she’d do anything else. The sun began to set as we lingered, a sight that would have been the most beautiful moment of the day if it hadn’t been so recently eclipsed.

India Day Seven

Farewell to Kanha! There was a mix-up with my bill when I checked out, but that notwithstanding I’m really going to miss Courtyard House. The lodge and the park are both wonderful places, and I hope to return someday.

Uday rode with us as far as the nearest mid-sized town, where he planned to catch a bus back to Jabalpur. While in town I got an unwelcome surprise when I discovered that my bank card wouldn’rt work in the local ATM. Thankfully I got enough cash in Toronto to last me the whole trip, though I won’t be buying any souvenirs or indulging in any more gin and tonics in the evenings.

As I actually got some sleep last night, so I was more alert during the car ride from Kanha to Bandhavgarh. The countryside was full of fascinating sights, from tent shelters on rickety-looking elevated platforms to groups of boys playing cricket in open fields. The sharp-eyed driver even spotted a couple of foxes not far from the road.

Like last Thursday, I got to my destination in time to have a quick lunch before the afternoon drive got underway. The Nature Heritage lodge was a fascinating place. Unlike Courtyard House, which was a single building, my home-away-from-home for the next three days was more spread out. I was staying in half of a duplex, one of several that surrounded a courtyard landscaped with narrow paths that wound through plant beds and patios.

The drive procedure was a little different, too. The lodge was actually in Tala, the town on the edge of the park. Thus the jeep ride was shorter and followed an interesting route through some twisty dirt roads and through a back alley with its own barber shop and small store.

The park gate was more familiar, looking and working a lot like Kanha. I was surprised to find that I wouldn’t be accompanied by a naturalist during my drives in Bandhavgarh. That would have been rough to start, because Uday was a big help while I was learning how everything worked. But once I got used to the routines, I found I was able to get by with just a driver and a guide. The guides in Bandhavgarh were nice guys who knew the park and did a great job keeping me informed and finding photo ops.

After driving around for awhile, we settled on a spot near a grove of trees beset by strangle vines, huge things capable of slowly killing even the strongest trees.

A large group of jeeps were all clustered in the same area, with all the guides listening for alarm calls. We sat there for quite awhile before the guide decided to try a different spot not too far away. By that point I figured it was getting late enough that the light would be too bad to get good photos of distant wildlife, so I was ready to call it a day.

Then I got to see Solo. She gets her own entry.

After the Solo encounter, we were running seriously behind schedule. The driver sped us back toward the gate along bumpy roads that gave me visions of Mr. Toad exclaiming, “No thanks, I’m not getting on that thing!”

Nature Heritage custom was to greet returning guests with a hot towel and a cold glass of lemonade. Tea was at 6, served in a shelter with a bonfire in the middle and comfy chairs all around. And best of all, it came with pakoras.

Dinner was at 7:30, served in the dining room in the main building. By the end of the long day and the huge dinner, I was beyond exhausted. And yet I was up for awhile, unable to get over the excitement of my first close encounter with a tiger.

India – The Langurs

Langurs were a common sight in both parks, so common that the guides paid them little attention. As we don’t have a lot of monkeys back home in Kansas, they seemed more interesting to me. So I photographed them as the opportunity presented itself.

I’m sure I must have seemed odd to the folks who grew up with them. When I lived in Washington it always amazed me that some tourists took such an interest in the squirrels. Of course monkeys – however common in India – are more scarce in other parts of the world. Squirrels, on the other hand, can be found pretty much everywhere.

At one point in Bandhavgarh I saw a herd of deer clustered under a tree. The guide said there was probably a troop of langurs up in the branches, and their movements made leafs fall down for the deer to eat.

The langurs were bold. During my first drive in Bandhavgarh the jeep had to swerve a little to miss one who refused to move his tail out of the road.

And two days later we were driving past a house on the other side of the park boundary wall when I spotted a langur running along the tops of the house’s fence, evading a couple of dogs in hot pursuit. Once he got to safety, the monkey produced a guava and started to eat it. I asked the guide if the people in the house left fruit out for the langurs. He laughed and replied, “No, he stole it.”