India - How to find a tiger in the jungle
Nathanael Mokry
After our time in Nepal, Rachel and I headed to central india to meet up with her parents, aunt & uncle for a tiger safari in central India. Our hope was to spend a week in the jungle in the hope of catching sight of a Bengal tiger at Kanha National Park. What I didn't know walking into this is that they are quite elusive. You can go on safaris for a week-straight and still not see one. So I entered this with low expectations...
Steps for finding a tiger:
1.) Look for tracks (Pug marks) & poop!
2.) listen for jungle alarm calls from different animals. As soon as any animal sees a tiger, they all freak out.
3.) Keep your eyes open and wait!
We had 5 days, and a total of 10 scheduled jeep safaris planned. Many other people don't stay that long, but many people also don't see tigers. We wanted to make sure we had a good chance of seeing them.
There were several types deer in this park, but these were the most prolific by far. These are called Chital. They were seemingly EVERYWHERE! The tigers eat pretty much everything, but they will eat alot of these lil guys too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chital
We were hearing the alarm call of a barasingha deer and stopped the jeep to see if we could spot it as well.
So, whenever we drove, we were looking for easy signs of tigers. Here's a picture of one of their pug marks. It was always exciting to see one of these on TOP of tire tracks because it meant that the tiger had been in this area recently!
Banyan trees. These things were huge and were scattered througout the jungle.
No blog post would be complete without at least some mention of poop. We were found tiger POOP! It was HUGE! Notice all the hair!
There were peacocks all over the place. The tail feathers were very short on most of them. Apparently they drop the longer tail feathers in the rainy season and start re-growing them in the drier season.
We also found some bigger sambar deer in the area as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambar_deer
A langur monkey family caught in the process of grooming eachother. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_langur
We spent DAYS in these jeeps... The rules of the park did not allow us to step out of the jeep except in designated places... We became experts at holding our bladders, although, sometimes it was difficult with all the bouncing of the jeep.
We saw this guy doing some work in the park. I don't think there are any wild elephants in the park, but they do use them to get into the dense bush.
Rachel's dad took a picture of rachel and I as we were looking in the jungle. Thanks for the pic!
Scenery... Sunsets and sunrises were the best part of the day out here. Always warm & beautiful.
Another clue that Tigers are in the area. They will stand up on their hind legs and mark trees with their claws as a way of marking territory. It is amazing to see how DEEP they can get their claws into wood. We saw some claw marks that were 12 and 15 feet high... these guys are BIG!
We also saw Gaur. They are the largest form of the Bovine family. These are all females, but apparently the males are ENORMOUS! Apparently they can grow up to 7'3" at the top of their shoulders...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaur
Driving around and waiting for the morning fog to dissappear
Sometimes the monkeys were quite naughty... This guy was trying to steal our breakfast, and we had to chase him off several times. He got angry, and then hopped on the top of this jeep in the process of attempting to attack the smallest person in the area. Sometimes they bite. As you can see, that kid was a little scared... 5 minutes later, that same monkey sat on the edge of a jeep hood and pooped to show his un-happiness.
We also found some sloth bear tracks. Notice the very long claw marks
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloth_bear
When these guys were not being naughty, they were actually quite cute!
More Chital... take a look at those antlers! They grow them, and shed them every year.
A fun picture... Rachel's dad was giving me some ideas for different types of photos.
Another sunrise...
Our driver for the week. He had keen eyes for spotting tiger pug marks, and many different animals. His weekly salary as a jeep driver was 4,000 rupees per month (~$65). Many of the people who live here rely heavily on the tips tourists provide them for their services.
Keeping their eyes & ears attentive for ANY signal of a tiger. .. this park had both jungle and open areas as well. Very pretty.
We also happend came upon the blood from a recent kill. Our guide said that a leopard had just killed a monkey in this spot. Later that day, we did spot a leopard, but only for a second or two. They are quite shy.
On our last day & last safari, we finally drove up on a tiger... can you spot him? I almost couldn't! These guys are well hidden! As soon as we stopped, he started hissing at us and whipping his tail around... Those are signs that he is about to charge. As soon as our guide saw this, he started whisper-yelling at the driver to BACK AWAY!!!! ... not gonna lie, when I heard the tone in our guide's voice, I started to get a little scared.
After we backed away, the tiger emerged from the greenery, and we saw that he was BIG! Apparently this tiger had recently found his way into the park and was not used to jeeps... He wasn't very happy with us and started following us... Most of the tigers in the park had already been identified, but since this was only the second time that this tiger had been spotted, he hadn't been given a name yet.
Our guide said that this tiger was bigger than the largest known tiger in the park, and estimated that this guy was about 300kg (~480 pounds)... HUGE! ... He was probably the one making the 15' claw marks on the tree... We were very lucky to see this guy.
Headed back after a happy safari...