Our story takes us to the minimalist town of Sawai Madhopur, famous only for its proximity to Ranthambore Tiger Reserve. Ranthambore, as we call it for short, is a 300sqkm natural park, previous royal hunting estate, now home to over 60 Bengal tigers, allegedly. We came to see tigers.

Now, you might detect a small hint of scepticism, verging on bitterness, in the above paragraph. For it is true that we saw no tigers in our two Safari outings. Safari here is a word that means bumping around on the back of a truck with 20 other people while scanning the landscape and eating dust. It lasts 3 hours after which the buttocks are tender, the throat is dry, and it is time to shake the dust from your ears and underpants.

Not all is lost though because the reserve has a beauty beyond the tigers with lakes, golden rolling hills covered with golden trees (such that a tiger might be well camouflaged), sharp escarpments and of course plenty of tiger food. Tiger food here means monkeys, peacocks, deer, eagles and crocodiles. All were plentiful and easy to spot. We were also lucky to spot a large cat, small in the distance, up a hill, for just a minute. We were happy to believe that it was a tiger and everyone in the truck was very excited but the guide was happy enough to bring us back down to earth declaring it to be but a leopard. The Bengal tiger can be up to 3m long (with tail) and weigh up to 300kg but leopards are about half that.

See if you can spot these animals in the pictures below…

 

Apart from safariing, the other major attraction here is Ranthambore fort although it is not much touristed but it’s rather more popular amongst worshippers of Ganesh for there is a famous temple within. It is a nice day trip with a bit of walking around, money dodging, temple climbing, etc. The Jeep ride there is much much much more comfortable than the back of a truck.