India Day Four

Train stations tended to be noisy places, and we stopped at one every 30 minutes or so. Thus rest was a series of naps rather than a continuous sleep. Around 2 a.m. we stopped in Bhopal, which of course conjured disturbing memories of the 1984 disaster.

During one restless moment, I went through my travel documents and noted that my destinations had been reversed. I was supposed to begin with Bandhavgarh and then go to Kanha. But because of a scheduling issue, Kanha was my first destination. It ended up working out much better that way, though I didn’t know it at the time.

Thanks to my insomnia, I got to watch the countryside slowly come to life as the sun rose. The misty weather persisted, which made everything even more dream-like than it would otherwise have been. Many of the stations were crowded even early in the morning. And out in the countryside dirt paths frequently paralleled the train tracks. Shirts on poles – doubtless improvised scarecrows – stood guard over the fields.

Things took a turn for the crazy when the train reached its final destination in Jabalpur. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, so I gathered up my luggage and headed out. I figured that the next driver would meet me outside the station, just as the first one met me outside the airport. Apparently he was going to meet me right outside the train, and somehow I managed to get past him. As a result, I ended up besieged by other drivers offering to help out (though I doubt any of them could have gotten me to my destination) while I tried to reach my contact in India to find out what was going on.

Eventually the driver and I found each other, and from there it was smoother sailing.

Jabalpur was clearly not Delhi (few places in the world are cities of more than 20 million people). But it was a lively town full of people and traffic and cows and dogs. After stopping for a restroom break, we headed out of town. On the outskirts I saw a troop of monkeys, my first can’t-see-that-in-Kansas animal.

To an extent the countryside reminded me of home, one set of fields being not dissimilar to another. However, the narrow roads – blocked here and there by herds of goats or wandering cows – were a new experience. Often they were somewhere around one and a half lanes wide, which made passing and oncoming traffic an interesting experience, particularly when the route entered an Ozark-like hilly region.

Initially I comforted myself with the assurance that people drove on these roads all the time, and what seemed strange and dangerous to me was commonplace and non-threatening to everyone else. Then I started seeing the wrecks, piles of the twisted remains of trucks, cars, carts and motorcycles. One particularly dramatic mess must have been fairly recent, because a truckload of eggs was scattered all over the place. Men and boys crouched in the dirt, breaking cracked eggs into big silver bowls. Waste not, I suppose.

We passed through several towns full of sights I wish I’d had time to photograph. As with Delhi and the train, I had to remind myself that I was allowed to have experiences without recording every single moment, and stopping to take a picture of each moment that would have made a good shot would have extended my trip by days. Or weeks. Or months.

Later in the trip I did manage to take some pictures of one aspect of Indian life that caught my eye: the garage-like buildings that served as stores, warehouses and even homes. Three walls, a roof, a floor, and an open area to do business with the world. Some stood alone, but lines of them (sometimes with apartments above) were more common.

At around 11:45 I spotted the first billboard for the tigers of Kanha National Park, and by 1:00 we arrived at Courtyard House, my home away from home for the next three days. Immediately the staff was all super nice. I was greeted with a Coke and a warm towel, a level of attention I was certainly not used to.

I got there just in time to get a quick lunch in before going to the park. While I ate, I chatted with Uday Patel, who would be my naturalist during my time in Kanha. He was a truly excellent person, knowledgeable and chatty and helpful not just with the flora and fauna of the park but also navigating the routines at the lodge.

After lunch it was time for my first park drive.

Here’s how the drives worked: the driver, the naturalist and I got into a jeep outside the lodge. We used a different jeep each time, but they looked more or less the same. I forgot to ask if they were borrowed from the park or provided by some other source. On each trip Uday sat down next to the driver and I sat on the bench behind them. At the park gate we took on a guide who worked for the park, and he sat on the bench behind me. We stayed in the jeep the entire time we were in the park (other than breakfast and restroom breaks).

The trip from the lodge to the park went through some beautiful countryside and a couple of small towns. This first afternoon was market day, so on the way in we passed a lot of people headed for the center of town and on the way back we passed the crowds again as they went home.

When we got to the park, we took our place in a long line of jeeps waiting for the gate to open. The air was warm (though it would turn chilly before the end of the drive). Mikhail, a man from Russia (seen in the back of the first jeep photo above), stopped by, introduced himself and briefly bemoaned the lack of tigers. Apparently he’d been there for three days and hadn’t seen one yet.

When the gate opened, the line of jeeps sped into the park. The first roads were smooth asphalt, though they soon gave way to dirt tracks. I was surprised at how quickly I got used to the idea of thousands of dollars worth of cameras and lenses bouncing around next to me in an open vehicle. I also noticed that the roads were so bumpy that my Apple watch thought I was exercising, which in a way I suppose I was.

Almost immediately we saw spotted deer (see the separate entry on them) and the tall, straight sal trees common throughout the park. As the roads diverged, the traffic spread out until we were driving around by ourselves.

The trick to locating tigers is to listen for alarm calls. The big cats leave traces such as paw prints and scratch marks (see above), but if you want to know where they are at any given moment, you need the other animals to help you out. Animals that live in groups – such as monkeys and deer – will make specific sounds when one of them spots a predator in the vicinity. So hearing the call, recognizing it and figuring out where it came from are the keys to finding tigers.

The calls vary in quality as well. For example, langurs have a reputation for making alarm calls for just about anything or even nothing at all. On the other hand, the sambar deer’s call is an almost sure indication of a tiger nearby. So I was thankful to have a naturalist and a guide who knew what to listen for.

Somewhere around mid drive we stopped for a toilet break. The facility was little more than an open space behind a fence, so I felt bad for the women on the drives who can’t have had an easy time with that.

Other than deer, trees and other common sights, we weren’t having much luck on that first drive. But just after we gave up and headed back toward the main gate, Uday spotted a sloth bear.

They’re solitary and scarce, and it was even more unusual to see one out in the open. But there he was, wandering across the field and down into a creek bed. My photos are more Patterson-Gimlin than National Geographic, but it was still an incredible sight and a great start for the heart of the trip.

Back at Courtyard, we had tea and then I got a few minutes to rest before dinner. Between tea and dinner, the lodge hosted a bonfire. Uday, the other guests (who were generally few) and I clustered around an open fire. We enjoyed soup and an appetizer, and I had a gin and tonic each evening. The conversation at this evening’s fire was mostly about camera equipment.

Then I got called in to dinner, where I sat at the end of a long table and dined on my own. The staff was highly attentive, which was both nice and a little disconcerting. That’s on me, though. I’m not used to being hovered over and probably never will be.

The meal was terrific. I’ll tackle the topic of food in a separate entry.

After dinner I went back to my room and once again passed out cold. I slept soundly at the end of what was quite probably the most eventful day of my entire life.