October 30, 2004

Three Stripes and We're Out
Sawai Madhopur, India

A few weeks ago I was reading a local newspaper; English language obviously as my Hindi is about as rusty as a second class bath tub on the Lusitania, that told us that the Gandhi's, India's "first political family," had been on a safari at the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in Sawai Madhopur. Cracking. If it's good enough for the Gandhi's then it's good enough for me and my better half. Just about. (That's "just about" good enough for us, not that Heide is only just about my better half!) So we were off to see some Tigers. You can't really come to India and not go on a Tiger hunt can you? It would be like going to a day at the races and not having a flutter, or supping alcohol free beer....You know really missing the big point.
 
We checked into our hotel (a pretty significant disappointment; the staff, well the mismanagement anyway, were only remotely interested in you when you were handing over your cash. I guess we're not the Gandhi's to them!) and set about rigging up a few trips to the park to spot some stripy cats. We were promised, repeatedly, that if we went on two or three safaris we'd absolutely, definitely see tigers. Being a bit of cynic sometimes I had my doubts. But the Gandhi clan claimed to have seen tigers on multiple occasions so it must be true, right? Pah, cobblers! The Gandhi's would say they saw more tigers than you can shake a beaters stick at wouldn't they? I mean, there's just a wee bit of vested interest isn't there? The family probably makes a few million out of tourism (this is pure supposition on my part thus I am completely in the clear for libel. I hope) so they're bound to say that they saw dozens of big beasts aren't they?
 
On our first safari, an early morning blast into the park, our chances of spotting the intended species was about as slim as the chances of seeing Ariel Sharon weeping at Yasser Arafat's funeral. The reason for this is simple. The driver was a total clown. He really thought that he was racing in the Punjab - Dhaka rally (the very, very poor relative of the Paris - Dakar rally) Clearly any tiger worth his camouflage stripes, which is all of them, would have retreated into the dense under growth after having seen an enormous trail of dust being thrown up from our hurtling truck which was still many kilometres away, but honking the horn just in case the tiger was still sleeping. We saw no tigers and as I think I can speak for all on board the trcuk when I say that it was no surprise. What we did see though was a beautiful park. There are wonderful temples hidden in the forests, pools full of crocodiles, and fantastic gorges, all over look by a fabulous castle. I imagine that it's a bit like the Tomb Raider film, but I never saw that so don't know for sure. Still we were coming back later that afternoon for a second run so our failure wasn't a huge disappointment.
 
Our second run also failed. Not so much because the driver drove at breakneck speeds around the park; he didn't. Indeed he hardly drove at all. We were supposed to be in the park for three hours hunting the big cats. We spent a little over two hours on the trail. Not sure why. I guess the driver was just a bit of a lazy sod. Still we did get to see some more of the beautiful park and we did, apparently, hear the warning call of a herd of dear which suggested that a tiger was nearby. Ah ha, and I just happen to be the new Maharaja of Bombay!
 
Well third time lucky right? Erm, nope. Another early call to wake us for the tiger trek and another blank was drawn. It was, it seems to me, a case of three stripes and we're out. We did see, apparently, a bunch of pug marks. To you and me that's a set of foot prints. But if indeed these had been left by a tiger, and not some cheeky local with a stencil at the end of a stick, why did we go charging off in the direction opposite of the pug mark? I don't know, perhaps some tracker out there can write in a tell me that it's a cunning ploy to lure the tiger out from his hiding place by pretending we're heading away from where he's hiding.
 
Of course another reason for our abject failure in spotting the four legged killing machines we came all this way to see, could be that we shared our safari truck with a large Indian family. Now, some of the more reasonable folk who are out there reading this, might say that that I'm being terribly un-PC when I paint a billion odd folk with the same brush and say, without remotely generalising, that all Indians are terrible tourists! They fail the renown and admittedly rather stringent: "Cassidy Tourism Standards & Decorum Test" by a monumental margin. Honestly there's less noise and hot air at a Benny Hinn revivalist get together, and from my (agreed, very limited) viewing of God TV, I can say that's a lot of noise. But, not nearly as much as that made by a large Indian family, whilst a bus load of others sit, scarcely breathing for fear of upsetting the beasties. Not even choruses of pantomime like "Shhhs!" are effective. Very poor form.
 
For what it's worth, I think, no honestly I do, that something is missing from Ranthambore. It could of course be tigers. Notwithstanding the claims of the Gandhi's of course. However maybe I'm wrong, perhaps there really are large, elusive feline carnivores lurking in the jungles of this amazing park but they just don't like tourists (you can't really fault them too much for that) and so they stay hidden. It could also be that they're invisible. Some may think this somewhat improbable but hey, I didn't see any. 
 
In the old days, when the British ruled India and wanted to see and err, yes, then shoot, tigers, they got a bunch of locals to wander through the bushes and force the creatures out into the open so that they could be blasted (I mean the tigers, not the beater wallahs!) It seems that
this was a very effective way of seeing tigers. Perhaps it was too successful and that is why we didn't get to see any. Regardless, I think that it would be a better use of the local herdsmen's time to get them to act as eco-beaters and chase down tigers so that they can be enjoyed by tourists (hopefully there might even be trickle down wealth creation from the tourism scheme but I'm not actually particularly sold on that theory) rather than just have these fellahs out killing tigers as has happened in the park in recent years. The reasons allegedly are that the tigers prey upon the livestock (possibly true, but from what I can gather they shouldn't be grazing within the walls of the park) or, and this I find worse, the tigers are slaughtered so that they can be sold for Chinese medicinal purposes; particularly in the impotence area. All I can say to this is "VIAGRA". Surely the Chinese have email in boxes that are flooded with offers for the stuff, everyone I know does!
 
So with this safari failure (and yes we still had to pay the bloke at the hotel for the trips, indeed our failures just seemed to make his money collecting smile broader) behind us we're setting off for new tiger free pastures elsewhere near Bharatpur. .

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This Page was last update: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 at 4:43:50 AM
This page was originally posted: 11/7/2004; 12:06:08 AM.
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