Off the back of a fruitless day, we trooped back to the hotel. On the following morning it was a new day, a new start, but the rain washed it all away. Much to my disappointment, the afternoon safari yielded no sighting either.
The second leg of our adventure into the wild was to Kanha. The Kanha Tiger Reserve covers over 2,000 sq km of forest area and houses 97 tigers, 48 leopards and herds of the barasingha. On our first safari we saw the magnificent barasingha along with its antlered brethren in the form of the spotted deer and the sambar deer. As we were making our way back after breakfast, our guide heard the alarm call of a deer, and we stopped dead in our tracks. The deer bleated shrilly, the monkeys jumped from tree to tree, screeching and chattering, and birds flew away calling frantically to warn their winged brethren. Sadly, all this was a little anti-climactic as the tigers were playing hard to get even here in Kanha. Although my disappointment was tempered by a sudden and striking realisation — the jungle holds so much more than just the tiger. By blinkering my search to just spotting the big cat, I was missing out on experiencing the great diversity of wildlife that the forest had to offer. Once again the rain played spoilsport, but we did spot a jackal, wild boar and a herd of Indian gaur. The exhilarating adventure came to an end and it was time to head back to Nagpur.
The orange-striped convoy was ready to roll, and this time I decided to drive the Thar instead of the Scorpio, just to have some fun. Parts of the road were riddled with potholes and I would just fly across the bad patches, kicking up a cloud of dust for the convoy behind. Oh, yes, I even got radioed in by the officials, “Media One, we need the car to go back in one piece!” It seems that the good people at Mahindra needed to be reminded of what the Thar was really capable of. Even though we did not see the tiger, the experience was thoroughly enjoyable. I ended the drive with the words of our guide ringing in my ears. He said, “Even though you did not spot a tiger, five tigers spotted you.” That’s good enough for me.
