Tigers!!!

We were incredibly lucky this morning. We headed out early to try to spot tigers before the heat made them find a spot to sleep. We wanted to find them along the narrow dirt roads in Ranthambore National Park. Apparently, the tigers find it easier to walk in the dirt rather than the dense and scrubby woods.

Within our first half- hour, we saw a tiger! He was a very large male, easily 5 foot long in the body and over 300 pounds. We didn't see much of him, mostly his backside as he twitched his tail and then stood up and walked slowly over the top of a hill and out of view. Our guide told us that this particular tiger was a known killer of humans, with at least two deaths to his name. In fact, these two deaths are what caused the government to ban overnight camping in the park. Our guide knew the tiger because of the territory, as tigers are very territorial. We were thrilled to see him--our escort Uttam has been to this park many times and had never seen a tiger before. So we were very lucky.

And then we got so incredibly lucky it's still hard to believe! About 45 minutes later, we saw two tigers together, a father and one of his cubs. These two are quite rare; the father stepped in to raise his two cubs after their mother was killed defending them from another tiger. He's raised them now for almost a year, showing them how to hunt and survive. We only saw one of the cubs, but we got to watch father and daughter for more than a half hour. They stayed quite close to us, walking alongside our safari jeep and then crossing the road to get to a small stream. The father went into the water on his belly and lapped it up. The cub, who was shorter and much thinner, followed slowly afterward. Then the dad got up and moved downstream about 50 feet, where the roots of a giant tree pushed the stream into a small watering hole. He went in full-body up to his shoulders and settled in. He stayed for about 15 minutes, not 30 feet from us, taking an occasional drink, twitching his whiskers, gazing around and cocking his ears every now and then. He even yawned once.

In the meantime, the cub followed her dad over to the tree, but instead of going into the water, she decided to climb the tree! She went up about 15 feet and stood in the crux of some large branches and just looked straight at us. Then she lay down on the branches with her back to us, twitching her tail. She got bored fairly quickly and jumped down, pacing around until her dad was ready to go.

It was amazing! We were so close to them, and they seemed so completely unconcerned about our presence. The naturalist who was guiding us said it was extremely rare to see a tiger climb a tree, as only the cubs are light enough to do it. In fact, we were one of three safari vehicles that got to see these tigers. One of the other cars contained a camera crew from National Geographic who were filming a tiger documentary. Our naturalist said this was easily the best footage they would have gotten on the month they've been here, so we are going to watch out for the film when it comes out. It's so exciting!

Of course the park has other amazing animals too, and we saw wild peacocks in the woods, some spreading their tails. We saw huge groups of the local monkeys, the black faced langurs. We also saw small deer spotted like fawns, and the quite large sambur deer. We saw the birds that clean the teeth of the tigers, although we didn't get to see them in action.

We drove to a small lake, and it was filled with water birds-- we saw storks, ibis, egrets, and even flamingos! We also saw small green parakeets, and some kind of shiny deep bright blue birds that shimmered in the forest light.

We have two more drives, one this afternoon ( in this heat!) and another tomorrow morning before we leave. We are hoping for more tigers, of course, but also cobras, crocodiles, and giant monitor lizards. We've been so lucky so far, so we are hopeful!