Mahindra invited Car India on an adventure into the wild to shoot the tiger (with a camera, of course). The big cats played hard to find, but our off-road machines did just fine. This is how the wild drive panned out
Story: Ryan Lee
Photography: Priyanka and Mayuresh
There was the cacophony of alarm calls, the rustle of dried leaves… but the crouching wild cat stayed camouflaged in the forest.
Get ready to get lost – a five-day escape into the wild with Mahindra Adventure, playing the spotting game, the orange stripes of Mahindra’s convoy versus the black stripes of the tiger. Our 20-car Mahindra convoy was lined up and ready to begin the first leg of the Wild Escape, a drive to Tuli Resorts, Pench, our base for the next two days. The Pench Tiger Reserve, said to be the setting for Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, is home to 47 of the famous big cats.
An early morning (4.00 am) wake-up call and we were up and ready to track the tiger. The touch of morning dew, the misty trail, and then the lazy sunlight penetrating through the tree tops — it was right out of the annals of poetry. The first animal we saw was the spotted deer; although, considering there are 25,000 of them in this park, that wasn’t unusual. As we ventured deeper into the forest, we spotted the sambar deer, and a troop of monkeys frolicking about on branch and stem. After a packed breakfast in the jungle, we made our way back to the resort. With a silent prayer for some good luck, we set off on our afternoon safari. We spotted more deer, a serpent eagle, and the Indian gaur, but as for the real prize our eyes were scanning the trees for, it seemed a lot like crouching tiger hidden tiger!
