Tiger tales at Corbett

While we still have a long way to go before our tigers are off the endangered list, for someone who has travelled across India searching to the elusive tiger, I would be just happy to glimpse a tiger in the wild.

Recently, I travelled to Jim Corbett National Park in the hope of achieving my dream of seeing a tiger in the wild. The park spreads along the foothills of the Himalayas, covering an area of over 1318.54 sq. km. Although I was thinking only of tigers, I learned that the part was a rich with wildlife and a surprising range of fish and birdlife as well as other mammals, including vast herds of elephants.

Upon arriving at the Tiger Camp Resort, we were taken to the Ramganga river, where the elephants were having a wash. While the elephants rolled in the water, kids who were lucky enough and brave enough ventured into the water and helped the mahouts to wash their charges.

These were the same elephants which were to take us into the park in the evening, where we were hoping to see a tiger. We weren’t so lucky as a family who passed us; they had seen a tiger the previous night from quite a close range on the elephants. We did manage to see a lot of deer and a python as long as a train and lots of birds and monkeys.

That night the people at the camp gave us a talk about the many variety of animals in the park and advised us not to be disappointed if we didn’t see a tiger on our visit.

Even though tiger numbers have grown inside Jim Corbett Park (the last census reported 240 tigers), the tiger is also a part of a wide eco system of animals that all need each other in order to survive.

The whole park is a society unto itself with rules and guidelines that only people who understand the language of the forest know. Jim Corbett, for whom the park is named, grew up in the Kumaon area and from a very young age would venture into the forest.

Gradually he learned the language of the birds and the monkeys and the mammals. He could track a tiger by the sound of alarm calls that the birds made in the jungle.

In the morning we took a jeep safari, our guide had tracked the tiger to a thicket near the road. He had heard the barking deer cough which is a sign of alarm, and the distress calls of the birds in the trees led our guide to believe that the tiger was hiding or sleeping in the bush.

We saw tiger tracks on the side of the road that were very fresh but alas! No tiger. No matter, in the afternoon we swam in the Riverine Forest Resort, home of the trophy fish Mahser and other monsters such as the Goonch, a freshwater fish that can grow up to 300 kilos!

It wasn’t until a week later when I had taken a walk in the jungle near my house in the mountains outside of Jim Corbett Park that I got my wish.  Sitting in the jungle I heard once again the alarm calls of the birds in the trees, since I was a long way from anyone I thought that I should return home.

When I stood to leave I saw a leopard heading towards me in the jungle. What a beautiful sight to see this sleek animal as dappled as the forest around him, moving like a dream through the undergrowth. Suddenly he sensed me.

For a minute or two we stared at each other and then I jumped smartly clapping my hands to frighten the cat away.

Cats and human interaction in the forest can often become fatal; this is one of the biggest problems around tiger conservation.

Tigers and other wild cats have seen their natural habitats shrink as we humans move further and further into their kingdoms.