Wild Encounters in the Tiger Land in the summer of '99

Six o'clock in the evening. We spotted the first animals just as we drove in from the Reception Centre. That lightened our mood, after the long drive from Delhi. The reception area at Corbett's Dhangari gate has been well planned. There's a ticket counter and a yellow-washed toilet emblazoned with the words:

"Let no one say it, and say it to our shame
That all was beauty here before we came."

There's also the bust of that great Anglo-Indian hunter turned conservationist, James 'Jim' Edward Corbett after whom the over 500 sq. km national park has been named. There is also a museum and orientation center, neither of which are user friendly, but that doesn't really matter.

In contrast, the 23 km road through the forest to the visitor complex of Dhikala was a delight. As we drove, we could see clearly that dusk was settling into the jungle life. In the distance, we heard the faint cries of the birds and it was an herculean task trying to identify the birds. On a tree nearby, a monkey sat chattering... we stopped to capture the solitary monkey silhouetted against the beauty of the sun and it grabbed a nearby branch and stuffed it into its mouth in a fit of anger and that's what our camera captured -- nature disturbed by man's intrusion. A quarter of the way down, we stopped once again.... Through a gap, framed by foliage, we got a clear view of the Ramganga river. Its flow spread across a wide expanse of sandy valley and there, in the dead center, was a herd of elephants with calves. Some were grazing off the trees, others were at the water's edge, drinking and bathing. The great black beasts moved and shifted, coming together slowly, separating at ponderous leisure, lumbering up the forested slope, wading across the river and drifting into the jungle.

I felt something stir within and a feeling of peace and calm settled upon me. This was a trip I had been looking forward to from I moment I set foot in Delhi that summer. Nothing I had read or heard prepared me for this feeling of oneness with nature. It was truly an exhilarating experience.

We were a group of six, my uncle, aunt, two cousins, my mom and me. By the time we settled into our "lodging cottages" as they are called there, with their just sufficient necessities, it was past eight in the night and after a quick dinner, we went to bed early for we were exhausted and besides we had a long day ahead of us. (In the morning we were told that, the previous summer, an elephant had removed the air cooler from the room we had slept in)... Thankfully, we weren't informed about that before we went to sleep!!

In the morning, we woke up to the music of the birds. We had booked for an elephant ride and so we set out, all ready to experience the wild in the wildest sense. No sooner had we started than we spotted a herd of elephants crossing the river and we were a bit wary as we were on an elephant and could be easily attacked. That first sighting, so close to us, set the tone for the rest of the ride.

Across a shallow part of the river, a family of wild pigs foraged, irascible black spots against a tumble of white boulders. Further on, in a small pool in the forest glade, a pair of barking deer blinked at us timorously. The elephant we were riding was a young one, Abdullah, and had an equally young mahout. They had us swaying down the embankment to the river and ford it on our plodding steed. Taking us up steep climbs and down equally steep depths, we were practically on edge. Soon we were deep in the forest....

A sense of eerie calm settled on us. In the silence of the forest, the only sound was the rustling of the fallen leaves as the elephant trodded upon them. The creepy feeling soon vanished as we spotted a herd of about twelve chitals grazing, but the grass was so high that we spotted them only when they raised their heads, blades of herbage dangling from their mouth, long enough just to give us a glance. Ten minutes away, we spotted five sambar which stared haughtily down their nose before darting away. At the end of our elephant ride, we were so thrilled by our experience, that we could barely wait for our next ride - the open gypsy drive, which proved to be equally adventurous.

The open gypsy drive was in fact very dangerous, as we were going into the forest to see the animals at a closer distance. We were warned to be alert and not to step out of the vehicle. At one spot, we turned off the main road to see a basking crocodile and their long-snouted cousins, the gharials. We spotted a wide range of birds, and it was fascinating watching them.

Later we drove for a while, seeing nothing, just watching and waiting in anticipation. We didn't have to wait long. Suddenly, we were startled by the whistle-shriek cry of a bird, breaking the silence that had become a part of us, which, the guide who accompanied us told us, was the lapwing. He then told us to watch out and wait. He turned off the gypsy and we waited... with butterflies in our stomach. We didn't know what was going to happen, and neither did we realized that what we were going to experience was way out of the ordinary. Soon we heard the cry of the barking deer and once again silence followed..... In a while, we heard the growl of the tiger. It sounded so close that we barely managed to keep ourselves from screaming. And then, in the patch of forest we had been looking at with strained eyes, we saw a movement. Two gloomy eyes stared at us and we froze. As we sat in a state of immobility, we saw the stripes moving and slowly coming out of the bushes. We were numb with fear, but somehow managed to mumble to the guide to start the vehicle; but he didn't budge an inch. Then, as we watched the tiger with our hearts in our mouth, it gracefully moved and seated itself a few feet away from us. For a moment, we lost our fear and were mesmerized by the tiger. At that moment, the guide started the gypsy and we drove off. The first to recover was my uncle and in the split of a second, he managed to take a shot of the big cat.

It was truly an unforgettable experience. I feel a chill creeping up my bones when I just think of it, even now. Later we were told that the lapwings were the guardians of the jungle and when they sounded their alert, the herbivores drifted away.

We savored the two days spent at Corbett. During our drives and rides around the park, we spotted chitals, barking deers, wild pigs, hog deers, jackals, langurs, monitor lizards, leopard pug marks and wild dogs. But the most exhilarating of them all, was the close encounter with the tiger.

As Robert Lynd said in his essay "The Unexpected", the special charm of nature is in her gift of the unexpected. I agree with Lynd when he says so. We never expected to see a tiger though we hoped we would see one. But the unexpected encounter with the tiger was breath taking!

I left the park with a deep sense of regret. It was a unique experience in the wild and the virtues of stillness and serenity in the Corbett National Park are still a part of me. I knew, even then, as we drove out of the park, that I would be back again to experience the wild all over again.