A kite called: whee- tweer- tweer-tweer! He hovered high in the saffron-dusted sky, and then sailed down. In a tree across the jungle stream, fruit bats stirred and squeaked irascibly; and then they took wing and became a silent, shadowy, armada spanning out into the sunset. Village cattle began to plod home, bells tonking around their necks: it was go-dhuli, cow-dust, time on the forested fringes of Pench. We recalled something written by Nobel Laureate and bard of the Raj, Rudyard Kipling, in his Jungle Book:

When Cheel, the Kite,
Brings home the night,
That Mang, the Bat, sets free,
And all is shut
In byre and hut,
Then loosed till night, are we.

Somewhere, in the dusk-dark of the forest behind us, the predators were stirring, alerted by the luscious scents of sambar and chital settling down to ruminate after their evening grazing. We were at the edge of the The Indira Priyadarshini National Park in Madhya Pradesh.

This was Kipling Country, not exactly the jungles and ravines of the Wainganga, described in the Mowgli tales but… as the atypical ‘Tommy Atkins’ might have expressed it…. “As near as dammit!” In fact, this low-rise tourist bungalow is called Kipling’s Court, and there’s a large mural of the legendary wolf-boy on it bougainvillea-hung façade. 

We stepped back, out of our balcony overlooking the stream, and turned in early. We had a 4:30 call for the 6 O’clock morning round. Six O’clock in the morning is fusion time in the jungle. Mist and shadows still spread in puddles between the massed trunks of the trees. We huddled in our jeep at the gate, joining the queue of vehicles, waiting for our entry tickets and our route.

In thirty years of travelling, we have visited National Parks all over our vast land. And yet, every visit to a National Park becomes an exciting new experience.

Bison! Gaur! Crossing the road..! A huge, black, muscular bovine, with dangerously curved horns, emerged out of the shadows of the forest, stood on the road gazing at us, his white ankle-socks immersed in a flow of morning mist. Behind him his cows ambled out.

And following them, a spindly-legged calf clothed in brown suede.
We moved on. A so-called, ‘Ghost Tree’, caught the light on its bare, trunk, trapping the rising sun on its golden leaves. It looked like a white-limbed ballerina. The shadows and the mist in little hollows began to be leached by the light.

 A jackal, heavily built and with a thick, wolf-like pelt, stepped out of the trees, posed on a russet carpet of fallen leaves, regarded us speculatively, posed for a picture, then vanished into the wooded wings. The animals were not scared of us: a good sign in a National Park. Even the pair of wide-eyed scops owls on a hollow tree, looking like the emblems of the Defence Services Staff College, regarded us solemnly as if they were part of the Directing Staff!

Then we heard a loud chorus of grating cackles. We raced down the road and stopped at a beautiful café-au-lait pond. Swimming on it were two golden brahmini ducks, as smug and contented as tea-cosies. As we looked at them they opened their beaks and gave vent to that hellish sound. Clearly beauty and harmony don’t always go together.

The sun was high in the sky now and we decided to return. But, before we did that, we stopped over at the Orientation Centre near the gate. Its dioramas, particularly the one showing a leopard and its chital prey draped over a branch, were excellent; its descriptive boards the best we have seen in any of our National Parks.

We then drove back to Kipling Court for breakfast. After browsing from dawn to mid-day, the strictly vegetarian grazers generally like to rest in the afternoons, digesting their food. They should not be disturbed at this time.

Evening rounds begin between 3 and 4 pm when the sun has lost its sharpness and deer and antelope are often easier to spot. When we entered the forest again we met sambar and nilgai... the latter rather briefly as these slate-coloured antelope prefer the shelter of the deep woods and stand stock still, merging into the shadows.

In most of the National Parks of  MP they have a Centre Point where visitors can buy snacks , tea, and soft drinks, and get the latest news about the whereabouts of  tigers spotted by the Forest Staff. We were lucky.

As soon as we reached there, we heard a walkie-talkie rasp out the location of the latest sighting. We raced ahead of the others, scrambled onto an elephant, swayed through the forest, spotted a tiger slinking away. Stopped.

There, a few heart-stopping metres away, was the Sher Khan parivar: a mother, three sub-adult cubs and, a little beyond, the remains of their sambar kill. The mother was obviously trying to distance herself from her brood. She had brought them into the world, nursed them, defended them from murderous males, taught them how to hunt; and now they were old enough to fend for themselves. She was ready to get on with her life, find another mate, raise another family.

But the siblings were reluctant to cut their family ties. They huddled together, groomed each other, purred contentedly. We stayed with them for as long as we could, our cameras buzzing. Then we swayed back to allow others to visit that happy family. Clearly, not all tigers have been reduced to Chinese potency pills, as yet …