Ten Days in Tadoba - Part 4

Ten days in Tadoba

Part 4: The Supporting Cast or What tigers like to eat.

Chital, or Spotted deer, are the deer species that have got it all. Saying that does not come easily to me. My first memory of wildlife, and one of the earliest memories I have, is of roe deer. I was riding on my father’s shoulders on a family Sunday afternoon walk when we were startled by a roe buck and a roe doe charging across the path in front of us. Their loud barking alarm call, the sight of them flying across the path and off through the trees, is one of the things that sparked my interest in natural history. Roe have been a constant interest and fascination for the intervening 46 years since that time. So to admit that my wonderful lifelong companions, by far the prettiest and most interesting of the British deer, might be second in the “Best in Class” category is a real wrench.

Chital can be found in most of the forest habitats in India. They have a similar lifecycle to European deer. The males grow new antlers each year. The bone is covered in blood-rich furry skin or ‘velvet’ until fully grown when the velvet dries out and starts to peel away. The males rub it off by thrashing their antlers against trees and bushes, giving vent to their increasing aggression as they come into breeding condition. They put on weight, especially around their forequarters and neck, their coats become thick and sleek and the colours deepen. They enter the breeding period, or rut, and look for females in oestrus with whom to mate, calling repeatedly to attract attention and challenging any rivals. The big difference between India and Europe is that this process is seasonal in our cold northern climes, but in the heat of Maharashtra it goes on all the time. So at any one time you can see males in full rut, males that have just shed their antlers, males with new antlers in velvet and fawns of every age.

Chital can be appreciated in the full panoply of their behaviour and biology. You can always see the most charmingly pretty fawns, massive, darkly handsome males and winsomely beautiful females. The males, in rut, have a dark chestnut coat that sets off the bright white spots. They have a black gorget patch on the throat and pale markings on their faces that make them seem to be frowning ferociously at you. The fawns are born all year round, so there are always delectable lamb-like deer gambolling around the females as they walk gently through the jungle.

A male chital, in full breeding fettle.

A group of female chital at the water's edge, wary of tigers and crocodiles, they didn't hang around.

The other common deer is the Sambar. This is a large, bony deer. Not handsome, but very impressive. They have long, shaggy coats that are a uniform brown, but can show up with a coppery tinge in evening light. They have long faces with very prominent scent glands at the corner of their eyes. These large, puckered holes are bare of hair and look more like a deformity than an organ. Their legs are very long and they move with a grace that implies huge strength. For all that strength, their gait is uncertain. The weight always on the hind legs, head and neck nodding as if in trepidation of what lies underfoot or just ahead. They move as if they are walking through a minefield. The males can get very big, with thick broad antlers that give them a grandeur that puts the Monarch of the Glen to shame.

A full grown male sambar

A young male sambar, very much at home in the water.

Gaur are called Indian Bison, but as is so common with mammals, it is a misnomer. It is not a bison but a true bovine, a wild species of cattle and the most impressive of its kind. The bulls run to weights in excess of a tonne. They stand over six foot at the humped shoulder and their massive frame supports a truly prodigious gut.

Gaur have the most gorgeous chocolate coat colour, lighter in the female (which is like Green & Black’s dark milk chocolate) and almost black in the male (90% cocoa solids). Both sexes have white bobby socks that make them look as if they got dressed up specially and the calves are just very lovely with huge brown eyes that would melt the heart of a pantomime villain.

Female gaur.

Male gaur, showing the huge gut that hangs from their massive frame. The white socks which are characteristic of the species can be seen.

The first thing that strikes you about Nilgai is their size, they are bigger than a horse, and they
are gracefully beautiful. It is a true antelope, but it’s meat is forsworn to Hindus as for religious purposes the animal is regarded as a cow; which just goes to show that irrational bureaucracy is not a new thing on the sub-continent and can’t all be blamed on the British. They are also called Blue Bull. The male is a magnificent beast with impressive horns and a slaty-grey coat colour that looks a bit bluish in the right light. They have an interesting arrangement with the local birds at each waterhole. I watched a female sidle up to a stand of bamboo in which several rufous tree-pies were hopping about. As soon as she stopped they hopped onto her back then walked jauntily down to her rear end and inspected under her tail for insects. Another alighted on the ground under her and peered upwards, springing up to her belly whenever it saw something crawl through her fur. When they finished taking ticks and flies off her, she moved away.

Like kudu, which they resemble in many ways; they have the most terrific ears. Huge, sensitive, mobile, fringed organs that definitely have minds of their own as they swivel about, twitch up and down expressing emotions as much as capturing sounds.

An adult female nilgai and two juveniles take a quick drink at the waterhole.

Chausingha have got four horns – how cool is that? Count ‘em. Two more than any other antelope on Earth. Except in the female of course and I didn’t get any shots of a male so you’ll just have to believe me. They are delicate, fragile, silent creatures that prance and tip-toe through the jungle thickets, rarely seen during the day. This lovely female and her grown-up daughter came out of the jungle when I was in a crowd of jeeps watching over a waterhole for a tiger. I was so excited that I immediately swung the lens around and started to take pictures. No one else was in the least interested. They saw a small, brown deer-thing that isn’t even tiger-food. I saw a rare, uniquely adapted animal that blessed me with a wonderful view of it’s beautiful self.

Female chausingha with young.

Indian muntjac are not like the smaller, more aggressive Chinese Reeve’s muntjac that we get in the UK. They are slightly bigger – about roe-sized – with huge eyes (adapted to night-time life) and an even deeper pre-orbital gland. I had some great views of these pretty little deer. Unlike Reeve’s muntjac, you tend to see the females more often that the males. From the verandah of my room at the Lodge, after 10 pm when the external lights were put out, it was muntjac, the “Barking Deer”, that I listened for. Their alarm call is far more reliable than chital or sambar. When they bark you know two things: a tiger or a leopard is definitely there and the ‘there’ is close to the deer because they inhabit thickets and can only see their predators at close quarters.

Female muntjac, showing the deep pre-orbital and forehead glands with which she scent-marks trees and shrubs to mark her territory and communicate her readiness to mate.

Now, talking of tigers ...

The next instalments of Ten Days in Tadoba will return to our favourite subject!

Dhole! Part 3 of Ten Days in Tadoba

Dhole

So there we were, at the end of Part 2, watching Maya and her three cubs cooling off in a shady pool during the afternoon heat. The German family who were also staying at the Lodge were in the next jeep and we were sharing what we had done that day. They asked me if I had seen the dhole.

I should explain at this point that dhole have always held a special fascination for me. I came across them in Rudyard Kipling's short story "Red Dog" which is in the Second Jungle Book collection. In that story they are depicted as the very worst kind of villain, a contagion that sweeps through the jungle, killing indiscriminately.  In later years I took the trouble to find more about these fascinating canids. To many Westerners, their deep red colour is reminiscent of our native red fox; but a dhole is no mere fox. Their large feet allow them to run down large fast prey and their impressive teeth will chew through tough hides and thick tendons. They are ferocious and resolute predators. Yet, for all their impressive dental armoury and voracious habits, they are not habitually aggressive to each other. They live in large packs based on extended families and all the adults care for the pups and young dogs. They communicate with a variety of whistles, clucks, yaps and whimpers. Their close familial relationships allow them to hunt large prey like chital and even the mighty gaur by coordinating their attack, chasing the panicked prey until it is weakened and can be pulled down. They are not really 'like' any other dog, although they are similar in their habits and social structure to African hunting dogs.

 

Long canines and huge shearing carnassial teeth - definitely not a fox!

We left Maya (it took me a while to convince my team that I really did want to forsake the longed-for tiger in favour of the dhole) and found them about twenty minutes later in the deep shade of some tall trees next to a stream, curled up in the leaf litter. There were eight adults and four pups. The pups were boisterous and kept annoying the adults; leaping on them, licking their faces, rubbing alongside them, whining and whimpering querulously. 

The dogs were constantly getting up, pattering about before lying down and resting again.

A puppy is greeted by two resting adults that it just woke up.

Red dog in the shade

As the afternoon was getting on the pack soon started to move up towards the road: it was time to be on the move, it was time to hunt. They walked off down the road, allowing us to follow closely. The puppies played with the adults, demanding attention. Both pups and adults continued to play together, yawning, grinning and tumbling in the dust beside the road, as they began to spread out down the road. 

A male and female rub up against one another, affirming social bonds.

The time to move. The time to hunt.

Then the adults began to whistle to each other. Although it was a soft sound like the squeal of bicycle brakes, it made their heads snap up and their attitude changed. Sharp muzzles were raised, large triangular ears pricked up and they started to move away from the river, breaking into an easy trot. We lost them as they moved into the tall grass and weeds beside the road. Our jeeps turned round in the road, dust rising from the gravel as we sped round to meet them on a road higher up the valley side. We arrived just in time to see them appear on the tarmac, emerging suddenly from the scrub. They travelled down that road for another half hour before taking to the jungle and disappearing.

Trotting down the road

That was not my last encounter with the dhole. On my fifth morning at Tadoba, we arrived at the gate at six o’clock in the morning. The light was dawn-grey and the Forest Guards were still busy washing and dressing after being asleep on the office roof or on machans (raised platforms) in the jungle. Across the dry paddy fields three slim shapes slipped over a bank and began to cut towards us.

“Dhole!” said a guide, pointing.

They were trotting in line, dust kicking up from their feet as they moved round behind us. Two more adults and three pups joined them and they all advanced towards the gate, passing close by and then stopping on the road.

Paperwork was being hurried up and got completed magically so that Guides could tumble into the jeeps as the gate swung wide and we drove up the road. We entered the Park with an honour guard of dhole trotting beside us. One of the pups was carrying a stick in his mouth, a small trophy that he was keen to show off but which all the others studiously ignored. Every few yards one of them would stop to scent mark a tree or leave a scat at the side of the road. They were a dawn patrol, travelling their territorial boundary, making sure that the neighbours knew to keep in their own space. Dhole are jealous of their jungle. They do not tolerate competition and goes for predators other than dhole. Tadoba’s tigress superstar Maya lost her first litter of cubs to dhole. They found and killed her two cubs. I waved to them as we turned to go into the middle of the Park and they carried on to probe the boundaries where the jungle meets the farmland.

Encounters with dhole are always on their terms. You can’t create an encounter, they just appear beside you. They let you get as close as they want and then move off when it suits them. You are not relevant to them. Their priorities are so utterly different to our own; there is nothing about us that would engage their interest.

Dhole are very beautiful: handsome in a way that many other canids are not.

On my ninth day at Tadoba, we were sitting in a small line of jeeps, listening for alarm calls. We were situated on a minor forest road just where it joined a larger road that skirted a large open area.

A good place to wait, watch and listen.

The high-pitched “POW!” alarm call of a chital from nearby in the dense bamboo scrub jolted everyone to full alertness as if a switch had been flicked on. More alarm calls sounded out as a small herd of the spotted deer walked past, scuffing through the crispy bamboo leaves that covered the ground. I heard something running towards us through the thicket, coming straight for us. I stood quickly, positioned the foot of my monopod securely on the side of the jeep and centered my weight so that I was balanced. Whatever it was, it was moving faster as it approached the edge of the thicket and I swung the lens to meet it. Chital burst out of the jungle, pouring like fluid from a tap they leapt across the track in front of us and bounded out across the grassland beyond it.

“Dhole”, grunted Lohoo my driver. “They run from the dhole.”

There was another star-burst of chital further up the track, some of them galloping down the track past our jeep, jinking and swerving, mouths gaping, eyes rolling: obviously terrified.

A pack of dhole were working this section of jungle. Spread out through the dense scrub, communicating with their quiet whistle, the pack was like a trawl that scours the sea bed catching everything in front of it. The deer were running, trying to get around the side of the pack before they were chased by one dog only to run in front of another. Two dogs came around the corner of the track, swinging along in a mile-eating trot, heads down, looking neither right nor left. I’ve seen fox hounds do the same thing. They are concentrating on what they can hear, rather than what they can see or smell, taking cues from their pack-mates who are in close contact with the quarry. Suddenly, their heads snapped up and they lunged off the track and dived into the scrub. Sambar honked in alarm and we could hear the sounds fade quickly, swallowed up by the jungle as the drama unfolded deep in the forest.

My last sighting of dhole was a single male. He was walking across the road, distended belly showing that his hunting had been good. His coat shone a deep red in the evening light. He paused to give us a long, slow appraisal. Then he turned aside, ears pricked to calls we could not hear. He walked into the jungle, answering a summons that was for him alone.

Belly distended with a large meal, this was my last view of dhole.

Ten Days in Tadoba - Part 2

Ten Days in Tadoba

Part 2: Maya!

Tigress, Goddess, Superstar

Maya is Tadoba’s superstar. She could not be more Bollywood if she had a team of dancers prancing and singing behind her wherever she went. When the jeeps are lined up along the forest road and people are hanging out to snap her with their phones, she walks calmly by just a few metres away; quiet, confident and aloof. When she feels like it, she will lie down and allow people to admire her dangerous beauty. When she cares to, she will bring out her cubs and show them off to her adoring public. To some people, Maya is a rock star. To others, Maya is a goddess.

Maya escapes the afternoon heat. 

There was excitement at Tiger Trails Jungle Lodge when we returned after our third tigerless day in a row. A Forest Guard had told Lohu, who had told Bonay who told me, that Maya had killed a sambar  (a large deer - see Part 4 in a couple of weeks) at last light and she was camped out with it and her cubs at one of her favourite water holes. A good sighting was virtually guaranteed for tomorrow. 

The following morning I was up and jumping before the Lodge staff. They peered blearily out of the Lodge doors at a quarter to five o’clock to see me walking about with all my kit in a pile. Panic spread quickly. Having a guest who did not need a wake-up call and who appeared before anyone was around was unusual to say the least, and hot water, masala chai, coffee and biscuits started to appear. 

Lohu was to drive for a German family that morning, so I was given a rather inexperienced young man who quickly worked up through the gears as we left the Lodge. After a short wait at the Park gate we were allowed in with a Tourist Guide on board and took off. And I do mean took off. This young man was obviously destined for the air force as a fighter pilot, or dreamed so. As we turned onto the black-top road in the Park he managed to get up to 80kph. It was impossible to keep hold of my camera gear and I was in danger of being thrown out of the vehicle whenever we hit one of the frequent bumps or pot holes. We were leaving a boiling wake of dust twenty feet high as I suggested (shouted) that we should SLOW THE ****! DOWN and get there in one piece. He took the eloquent Anglo-Saxon hint, but we did get to the waterhole quite early and set up in a prime spot amongst about ten other jeeps.

Then Maya walked out of the long grass with her three cubs just as another 30 jeeps arrived with an escort of lumbering buses and minivans full of waving, chattering gesticulating people and excited Guides all bedecked in incongruous camouflage gear. The whole horrid circus came to a shuddering halt, several bumpers bumped and a thick wall of dust rolled over us and across the water towards the three tigers. They stopped, blinked the dust out of their eyes and continued walking down to the water’s edge. After the dust had cleared I could see the three large cubs playing together while their lovely mother approached the water and gently reversed in, lowering her back end in gradually as if entering a very hot bath. Each cub approached their mother in turn, paying obeisance and receiving her welcome in what looked like a ceremony orchestrated for the adoring crowd. One of the cubs carried a sambar leg around like a trophy. The tigers were a long way off, so I took a few snaps then just enjoyed renewing my acquaintance with the most wonderful predator on the planet through my binoculars.

Maya lies down in the cool water, having reversed gently in.

Cub No1 comes forward to pay homage to their mother, rubbing heads and snuggling, before making way for Cub No2.

Cub No2 is greeted by their mother, rubbing foreheads together before going to lie down and make way for Cub No3.

Cub No3 is more playful, batting their mother on the head before going to lie down with the siblings

Next to my jeep was a group in a similar vehicle. Three men and two women crowded in to the back. The oldest of the women, who I took to be wife to one and mother and mother-in-law to the other two respectively, was talking excitedly to her family in Hindi. Then I realised that she had switched to English.

“Oh Maya, Maya, Maya. You are so beautiful. Oh wonderful Memsahib Maya, you are a wonderful mother. You love your children so much, don’t you?” She crooned. Why she spoke to the tiger in English; I have no idea.

On the other side of us a man was taking pictures. He was using a mobile phone with the tiny lens pressed up to one eye piece of his binoculars. That struck me as optimistic, but not as stupid as some of the cammo-clad men who had entry-level DSLR cameras on the back of 600mm and 900mm lenses and were using them hand-held as if they were machine guns. They reminded me of nothing so much as the images of Middle Eastern gun-toting militia men in the back of pick-up trucks that you see on the TV news. I don't suppose their images were any better than the man with the Samsung: holding a super-long lens still even on a tripod or bean bag takes practice.

I loved the huge enthusiasm that the crowd showed. An Indian crowd is not just a collection of people, it is a thing in and of itself. This crowd was there to worship Maya and they joined together in doing so. Even the National Park Tourist Guides and Drivers, for whom tiger sightings are everyday, talked about her and referred to her as a superstar. As soon as she appeared they were telling stories about her and preening like proud parents at the first public performance of an especially talented off-spring.

A long shot of two playful cubs.

We had to leave Maya at 09.45am to fly back to the gate for 10 and then back to the Lodge for the middle of the day. We were allowed back in to the Park at 3pm and went straight back up to the waterhole where we got pole position in the shade of a small tree. The jeep was ramped up at about 30 degrees facing up a small slope that I could look over if I stood up on the back bench seat. But to do so meant I was in full sun. Which is where I was when I saw the tiger.

It had been an hour or more since we had arrived and everyone around me was chatting amongst themselves, sitting in the shade and idly wafting the flies away. The flies didn’t like me, so I was not bothered by them. (I think they were Nationalist RSS flies with the big shorts and long memories when it comes to Brits). I was watching my front, expecting to see a tiger when, like a remote controlled toy, Maya swam into sight on the surface of the waterhole. No one else had seen her and she had swum out from a small island that shielded her from the view of most of the onlookers.

“Oh look,” I said in my best laconic-Englishman-abroad voice, “there’s a tiger swimming in the lake.” Trying to sound as if I was only pointing it out as a matter of the slightest interest.

There was a moment of silence in my jeep and the jeeps to either side. Even the local Gond Marathi-speakers all knew the English word “tiger”. Then everyone was shouting, “Maya! Maya! Maya!” and scrabbling to their feet, wobbling the vehicle and getting in the bloody way.

Maya, surrounded by rambunctious cubs, who used her as a bridge, lilo and floatation aid.

As Maya swum to shore, she was followed by her three cubs swimming in line like huge, stripy ducklings. They all clambered out and went into the long grass. In the morning, they had chewed the legs off the sambar carcase. Now they pulled the front legs, spine and ribcage out of the grass and into view, chewing at it and licking the meat off the bones with rough tongues.

Maya, with a deliciously chewy bit of deer, happy to share with her cubs.

Two of the cubs peer over the bank of the lake, making all the deer on the other side panic. Hugely satisfying!

One of the cubs, practicing stalking.

The celebrity family, lying in the evening sunlight.

Some people left at that point – amazingly from my point of view – so I asked our driver to get us into some of the vacant places which had a slightly better angle. It was a terrific sight. I gloried in it right up until the German family told me about the dholes.

That changed everything.

The next instalment of Ten Days in Tadoba will be out soon!

Ten Days in Tadoba Part 1

Ten Days in Tadoba

Part 1: Tadoba Andhari – the experience and the place.

As I waited outside the gates of Tadoba Andhari National Park on the first day of my visit, I could feel the excitement mounting. I leant back in the seat of the jeep, one arm draped nonchalantly across the seatback, trying to look like I do this every day and I’m just not that impressed. I couldn’t keep the silly grin off my face though, so I don’t suppose I fooled anyone except myself. The sights and smells of a jungle dawn made my blood fizz like champagne. The rapidly brightening sky promised the kind of light that British photographers rarely see. The sun was still below the horizon and the grey light washed the colours from leaves and the dusty dry paddy fields I could see in the distance. The dry earthy smells mixed with the aromas of wood smoke, the human tang of sweat and excrement. The Park is named after the god Taru or Tadoba who was killed in a fight with a tiger and the Andhari River which flows through the Park. In an attempt to stop myself gabbling too many silly questions, which I am apt to do when I am really thrilled about something, I read the big brown sign beside the gate. 

"The Survival of Man depends upon the Survival of Wildlife"

Which would, I considered, be a controversial thing for a UK government body to pronounce, but enthusiasm and absolute certainty in even the most unlikely assertions are two things that I love about Indian culture, so perhaps it was no surprise to find the Maharashtra State Forest Service making such a bold statement.

The Khutwanda Gate: much more exciting than it looks. 

Lohu, my driver, was chatting with the Forest Guards and Tourist Guides. Very important paperwork was being completed (India floats on a sea of forms-to-be-filled-in. They promise much, permit little and none of them seem to make any difference to how people actually behave). Suddenly it was done and the wide gates were being swung open. A Tourist Guide tumbled into the passenger seat and Bonay, my naturalist, sat up straight as Lohu started the engine and we took off into the Park.

The journey in the Park can be unexpectedly exciting. You expect to be excited by the idea of seeing amazing wildlife and the constant anticipation of a tiger round every bend, but what really excites you is the anticipation of not making it round the next bend as the jeep hurtles through the jungle and you thump up and down on the seat, clutching your camera and trying to hang onto the safety handles at the same time. Indian driving takes no account of passenger comfort; each grunt of pain, each sharp exhalation as air is driven from the passenger’s lungs is taken as a sign by the driver that he is doing a great job.

The Park has a good infrastructure of forest roads, with bamboo cleared away at the sides to aid viewing, and some long straight sections on which you can attain terrifying speeds

Indian safari is very different to the African original. In Africa, one motors gently around a very wide open, grassy landscape viewing game animals that are relatively easy to see. Indian National Parks tend to be forested, so driving around looking for things would be fruitless. What you need to do is go to the last place a tiger was seen, or go to a waterhole, and wait. Of course, everyone knows the same thing and is heading for the same place, so you need to get there early to bag a good place. Hence the unseemly haste as the gates open all around the tourist zone and the jeeps roar up the tracks. There is a 20kmh speed limit in the Park. When I pointed this out to the Drivers and Guides, they looked at me blankly. I told them that there were signs that charmingly informed Drivers to keep to the 20kmh limit to appreciate the bird song. They did not believe there was any such sign and we bowled along cheerfully at 40 or even 60kmh.

The Sign That Never Was

My first two days at Tadoba were tigerless and the whole experience became rather wearing as we went in relentless pursuit of a tigress called Maya and her three cubs. This involved patrolling two waterholes and the jungle in between. At popular waterholes, there will be between 20 and 40 jeeps, two buses, a couple of minivans and a saloon car or two. The routes between waterholes tend to be one-way systems. This means that your chances of survival are much higher as there is no on-coming traffic. Indian drivers do make way for each other, but only at the last moment: a habit that can increase the heart-rate exponentially. Having arrived at the first waterhole, all the Drivers and Guides start sharing intelligence gleaned from the Forest Guards who have been in the jungle over-night. This is done in Marathi, not Hindi. So my naturalist Bonay, who is from Rajasthan, could not understand a word of it and I had to ask for a translation. He then decided whether to tell me or not. I could always tell if it was something he didn’t want to repeat as my enquiry would be met with a good deal of sideways nodding: the head wobble that indicates that your Indian interlocutor is choosing his words carefully.

Eventually, I would enquire, “So. What are they saying?”

Bonay looks at me glumly, “No one is seeing tiger. No one is hearing tiger”. Head wobble. Pulls hopeless face.

I ask, “So what’s the plan then? Where else can we try?”

Sad Face. Head wobble followed by serious head-shake. “No. No. No. Not moving. This is the best place.”

“But if the tiger is not here, why do we stay?” I reply, searching for the logic in the plan.

Disgruntled face. “This is Maya’s Place!” Which seemed to be justification enough and an end to the discussion.

Gathered at the edge of one of the open areas, we wait to hear the 'Jungle Folk' reveal a tiger's presence.

So we continued to wait for alarm calls. Waiting for langur monkey, sambar or chital to see the tiger move and warn the jungle, and us, that Maya was up and going somewhere. The trouble with that was the fact that not all alarm calls are reliable. Chital will alarm call whenever they get a bit worried; which is a lot of the time as they are easily scared. Sambar are much more reliable and langurs will retreat to the trees and bark repeatedly for as long as they can see the tiger, leopard, dhole or snake that is causing the upset.

While we waited, I amused myself by watching my fellow tourists and the photographers especially. Indian visitors to National Parks follow certain fashions and most of these revolve around camouflage clothes. At one waterhole, I counted 16 different patterns of camouflaged clothing. As it is hot, there is not the same opportunity for clothing as there is in Europe. No need for a thermal gilet or four season top coat when the temperature is in the forties Celsius. So the cammo patterns are worn on scarves that keep the dust out of your mouth, caps, hats, gloves, t-shirts and trousers. I tried to add in the different patterns on all the camera gear, but I lost count: cammo tape on tripods, cammo covers on lenses and camera bodies, cammo style bean bags to rest on and cammo camera bags. This would all completely understandable for wildlife photographers if we were not sitting in a huge jeep-jam full of gesticulating and shouting Drivers, Guides and tourists with two huge busloads of locals who are all talking on their phones. The last thing that anyone is doing is making any attempt at concealment. The cammo is being worn on the body and the kit of the photographers as an adornment. It is meant to be seen. So it is now the very antithesis of camouflage.

Lohu, in grey shirt, ready to drop back into the driver's seat at a moment's notice.

Once you have settled in, an alarm call sounds. The Guides and Drivers immediately call for silence while talking loudly about where the call originates and what it means. If it is decided that it is best to get to the next waterhole, then engines are started and all the Suzuki Mahindra jeeps rev up, drowning out the chatter. I had to hang on tight and sit down fast as the call for movement comes swiftly and the clutch is let in with a bang regardless of my state of readiness, position or opinion. It’s like the start of the 1970s cartoon The Wacky Races. “And they’re off!” always went through my mind as the jeeps disentangled themselves from each other and headed off round the race track to the next waterhole. 

When there is certainty about where the next sighting will occur, most of the jeeps in the Park are in one place.

Huge frustration at the Moharli Gate, as drivers and guests realise that they bought licences to the wrong side of the fence. They could see that we were where they wanted to be.

The worst thing for a driver is to get caught between the two waterholes when a tiger walks out at one or the other place. That means that whatever he tries to do, his client will be the last to arrive and be unsighted. Unhappy client equates to low or no tip. Hence the race for pole position as the client is thrown side to side and up and down, clinging on for dear life to the seat in front and the camera on the lap. Keeping the camera wrapped up at this point is crucial as fine red dust rises in a cloud as soon as a jeep moves an inch, let alone racing the quarter mile. You arrive at the next waterhole in a cloud of red dust that rolls across the water’s surface like smoke from a battery of cannon. The late arrivals shudder to a halt behind you, releasing their own wall of dust that covers you and your precious camera is a thin coating of red grime. All the guides stand up as soon as their jeeps come to a halt, they turn this way and that, rocking the jeeps, calling out to one another and pointing at … nothing.

The Guides are pointing, big lenses swing round like a naval battery,  it's a .... (deep sigh) peacock.

So I waited patiently (well, maybe not so patiently all the time) for three days, getting a few nice shots of things that were not tigers and worrying that my coccyx was doing the job of the jeep’s suspension. I tried to relax, take it easy and not worry.

Then a tiger appeared and all hell let loose.

The next instalment of Ten Days in Tadoba will be out soon!