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.
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