Tigers 2, tourists 0- monsoon 1, tourists drenched.

Originally Written November 1, 2015

We took a three hour morning game drive and a four hour afternoon game drive, in Ramthambore Tiger Reserve looking for Bengals Tigers. India has a pretty aggressive program going on to try and maintain or increase the tiger populations and as such have set aside a number of animal preserves. Ramthambore is one of the largest at 392km2. The population has increased here from around 24 in the mid 2000s to 62 there now. We seen lots of tracks along the roads and some other groups actually seen a couple of tigers but our group was skunked. We did however see lots of tiger food.

Sambar,

chital or spotted deer

and Nilgai or Blue bulls.

It is illegal in India to kill any wild animal so these species thrive and raid the farm fields quite often.

It started to rain shortly after we got to the park on the afternoon drive  and the. Turned into a cold, some small hail crystals, tropics downpour. We were in an open topped safari truck and by the time we got back to hotel we had cold water running in every conceivable portion off our bodies. I told the guides that it was a nice show they put on, the downpour, but I hoped there was no extra charge.

As we sat in place waiting to hear from other groups of any tiger citing the naturalist was praising the Indian Kingfisher, a very pretty blue bird, so one of the group asked if was the national bird?

No the peacock is the national bird was the reply, however Kingfisher is the national beer.

And these guys are every where!