Sighting the big cat on foot
March 22nd 2007 We started our walk in the morning at around 7 am to the fort situated on the top of bandhavgarh hill. My guests were a couple of professional photographers and we had a park guide from the forest department with us. The climb to the fort is around 45 minutes walk from shesh shaya which is the reclining statue of lord Vishnu, though it is a steep climb but such a beautiful climb that one hardly gets tired. Once we were on the hill we visited the temple and saw the other statues of various incarnations of lord Vishnu. The top of the hill is a flat tableland on which there are many man made lakes, so after a hearty breakfast sitting near the temple we decided to move on to see the other lakes. While we were having breakfast I had a quick word with the priest who stays up there and he told me that three tigers are in that vicinity and that he saw them a couple of days ago. I told my guest about it and they were excited, as we moved forward we saw some tiger scat and old pugmarks that confirmed there presence in the vicinity and soon as we were approaching a lake our park guide who was a new boy in the field of guiding stopped and turned around shouting tiger! tiger! I caught hold of him and told him not to move as I looked I saw two tigers lying in front of us in the lake water, they were around 75 yards from us, one was looking straight at us and the other had not noticed our presence yet, I showed the tigers to my guests and told them not to make much movement because that might disturb the tigers and cause them to flee away, but our guide who was nervous on seeing the tigers turned around to flee and the sudden movement was seen by the tigers and they immediately got up from the water and ran down into the valley. We all were thrilled with such a great sighting of tigers on foot, which is indeed a very rare sight, and in fact it was for the first time that I had seen tigers on foot. But we still didn’t want it to get over and to push our luck more we sat down near the lake in hiding hoping for the tigers to come back in the water because it was already 11 am and it was quite a hot day. But nature had shown us enough and even though we waited for another hour we didn’t get to see them again.
Himanshu Rathore
(Naturalist Mahua Kothi)
March 22nd 2007 We started our walk in the morning at around 7 am to the fort situated on the top of bandhavgarh hill. My guests were a couple of professional photographers and we had a park guide from the forest department with us. The climb to the fort is around 45 minutes walk from shesh shaya which is the reclining statue of lord Vishnu, though it is a steep climb but such a beautiful climb that one hardly gets tired. Once we were on the hill we visited the temple and saw the other statues of various incarnations of lord Vishnu. The top of the hill is a flat tableland on which there are many man made lakes, so after a hearty breakfast sitting near the temple we decided to move on to see the other lakes. While we were having breakfast I had a quick word with the priest who stays up there and he told me that three tigers are in that vicinity and that he saw them a couple of days ago. I told my guest about it and they were excited, as we moved forward we saw some tiger scat and old pugmarks that confirmed there presence in the vicinity and soon as we were approaching a lake our park guide who was a new boy in the field of guiding stopped and turned around shouting tiger! tiger! I caught hold of him and told him not to move as I looked I saw two tigers lying in front of us in the lake water, they were around 75 yards from us, one was looking straight at us and the other had not noticed our presence yet, I showed the tigers to my guests and told them not to make much movement because that might disturb the tigers and cause them to flee away, but our guide who was nervous on seeing the tigers turned around to flee and the sudden movement was seen by the tigers and they immediately got up from the water and ran down into the valley. We all were thrilled with such a great sighting of tigers on foot, which is indeed a very rare sight, and in fact it was for the first time that I had seen tigers on foot. But we still didn’t want it to get over and to push our luck more we sat down near the lake in hiding hoping for the tigers to come back in the water because it was already 11 am and it was quite a hot day. But nature had shown us enough and even though we waited for another hour we didn’t get to see them again.
Himanshu Rathore
(Naturalist Mahua Kothi)
2 comments:
hey are tigers territorial?
Nice Blog and Very well presented..
I have been visiting Bandhavgarh since my childhood days.. I love Bandhavgarh.. I have had many sightings of the King in the wild but its not always that they accept your presence.. It depends..
Its always a great feeling watching the King on the Prowl..
Keep Posting..
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