Bandipur
Life had gotten very busy this new year, and when an opportunity presented itself to combine work with some weekend adventure, I jumped on the idea. I went to Bandipur last weekend with a bunch of people at work. It was, to say the least, a wonderfully wild interlude.
The Bandipur-Nagarhole-Madhumalai belt is supposed to have one of the highest concentration of Royal Bengal Tigers. We hoped to catch a glimpse of one during our 3 hour safari. At one point, our driver heard a 'warning call' from a langoor -- indicating that a predator was nearby. But we couldn't sight one. Further in the forest, we came across a nuclear family of elephants -- dad, mom and calf. The calf was never allowed to wander from between the dad and mom. Scouting around, we saw a small herd of bisons running up a slope, away from dense bushes. The guide said there possibly is a tiger in the bushes. We waited for about 20 minutes, enough to instigate the elephant dad to make some aggressive moves to ward us off, but the tiger was nowhere to be seen.
That we did not sight a tiger comes as no surprise. Later that evening, I was chatting with one of the guards at the camp. Just the previous week, a tiger census was conducted and they could find 30 tigers in the area surrounding the camp. Further, it was found that there are all of 1411 tigers in India.
It is sad that in a few decades, people may have to talk of tigers in the past tense. The national animal is in danger of becoming a relic of the past.
The Bandipur-Nagarhole-Madhumalai belt is supposed to have one of the highest concentration of Royal Bengal Tigers. We hoped to catch a glimpse of one during our 3 hour safari. At one point, our driver heard a 'warning call' from a langoor -- indicating that a predator was nearby. But we couldn't sight one. Further in the forest, we came across a nuclear family of elephants -- dad, mom and calf. The calf was never allowed to wander from between the dad and mom. Scouting around, we saw a small herd of bisons running up a slope, away from dense bushes. The guide said there possibly is a tiger in the bushes. We waited for about 20 minutes, enough to instigate the elephant dad to make some aggressive moves to ward us off, but the tiger was nowhere to be seen.
That we did not sight a tiger comes as no surprise. Later that evening, I was chatting with one of the guards at the camp. Just the previous week, a tiger census was conducted and they could find 30 tigers in the area surrounding the camp. Further, it was found that there are all of 1411 tigers in India.
It is sad that in a few decades, people may have to talk of tigers in the past tense. The national animal is in danger of becoming a relic of the past.
posted by Ananth Narayan at
10:00 PM
2 Comments:
Annie, Royal Nengal tiger is in the Sundarbans and not bandipur.. u have normal tiger at bandipur ;-)
@Nitin:
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_Tiger, its the same species of tiger found in the National parks in India.
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