Wow.. Finally the day had come to visit Jim Corbett tiger reserve, which was the talk of the town for last 2 months. The whole HR team wanted to celebrate its achievement of last year’s targets. Finally everyone arrived with their families on the morning of 22nd January 2009 to board the bus from Pune to Mumbai, to catch Rajdhani express. The journey started on a cool note, we played, giggled around and teased each other. We enjoyed all the games and dumb-charades a lot. While playing dumb-charades in train and the bus, to my surprise, I noticed that everyone had become so expressive even without words :). First time I realised that hey you can improve your expression and thoughts with dumb-charades! The exciting part started when we reached Delhi and we were searching for our sardar driver near the railway station. Finally we could locate him along with our bus. The journey was long.. from the Delhi station through the small villages across to the jungle town of Ramnagar.. Woo.. again we ended up playing dumb-charades, this time it was for 8 hours nonstop but we enjoyed it like anything. We were at our wit’s end looking for new/different/difficult movie name for getting one up on the other team. At last we reached our hotel at Ramnagar, called Manu Maharani, in the night after struggling with the Delhi traffic! Wooo was the hotel serenity!!! The moment we reached the hotel room we dispersed to our rooms to relax. Everyone had a shower and hit the bonfire dinner place. When we reached the dinner venue we heard noise of a waterfall.In the end we found that it was not a waterfall but a river beside the resort and the water gushing through was making that sound. It was freezing cold, everyone was in their comfy woolen attire. With soft music playing in the background, everything seemed like heaven in the night near the bonfire. Early next morning we had a walk by the river 'Kosi'. Crossing the river was also an adventure. Me and my husband saw a weird animal on the other side of river. The animal looked like an Otter (don’t know what that animal really was). The same day we rested as the journey was too long and tiring but of course we enjoyed every bit of it :).
Next morning we went for the jungle safari in an open-top Gypsy. There were 3 Gypsys hired each occupied by 4 of us. I must tell you that it was wonderful to cross those dry rivers, having round white and different colour stones. The dry muddy roads with trees on both sides offered cool, shady winds woo. All were busy capturing the amazing nature and its beauty with their cameras. You won’t believe it, but we spotted the big CAT in just the initial 15 mins of our safari. One of our drivers was intelligent, he first saw the pugmarks, and they were fresh marks as claimed by him. He started following the footprints of the big cat in Gypsy and we all heard a weird sound. It was the shrill of a sambhar indicating that tiger is coming or around! We could not see a single animal at that time, may be when tiger is around other animals hide in their den/shell. At the same time we could not locate the tiger too as the forest was dense. Everyone was getting anxious to see the tiger. Suddenly we saw the orange and black stripes scratching and brushing the bushes around. Finally we saw THE BIG CAT... Either he already had his shikar or he was still hunting. Our Gypsy was running parallel to him. He was moving fast and we were following him. We were not supposed to get down from our vehicle or make any noise as it was told by the other driver. Our Gypsy stopped near the dry river and the tiger was standing in the middle of the river and staring at us, as if asking us, who are you guys? What the hell are you doing in my jungle? Out of excitement my Gypsy driver, me and my hubby jumped out of the jeep to watch the royal huge tiger standing a yard in front of us. That view was incredible, I still remember he giving the glares/stares to the driver, me and my hubby. Everyone shouted at us to get back to vehicle… but we were so mesmerised with the view that we almost diid not hear their conversation. Finally we three got back to our Gypsy and by that time everyone was conversing animatedly. Ahhhh! That’s what me and my hubby both felt after that sight.. :) Everyone one was scared except me and my hubby when we got down from the Gypsy. The other Gypsy came near us and the other driver started shouting to our driver, threatening him for his job for letting us get down. I guess it was settled after a chat between the two of them. But I can't really forget that view.. It is still fresh in my mind. We continued to the deeper jungle for spotting more animal but could not view anymore, as you must be aware that if the tiger is around all the animals will be on the other side of the jungle. They say there are 164 tigers and out of those we could view 1 big cat. Yeah! We were one of the lucky groups to view that big cat, that too within first few minutes of our safari. Some took snaps some took videos but me and my hubby captured him in our hearts :).
Later we saw a sambhar staring at all of us. He was standing as if he was giving photo shoot, as he was giving pose to click pictures. We saw a wild hen too, a beautiful and multi colour hen. It was wonderful to be in the nature bed, watching tall trees, muddy-shady roads, thick forest where we were trying to check other animals. From that day I'm a fan of the big cats. What life they have man!! The way they walk in jungle, the way they live their life. It’s too royal and of course the living style is marvelous!
We left the jungle and found a baby elephant wandering on the road. I guess he had lost his way. We were on our Gypsy screaming and shouting at the sight of it and the poor baby elephant got scared and ran away in the jungle, standing behind the thin tree. He was not much aware though that his body is too huge to hide behind the tree :). We enjoyed clicking his photograph too. I was acting like a kiddo and was giggling all the time entertaining the group as I always do. On a happy note, we moved to the beautiful sceneric Nainital the next day.
Thanks for reading patiently! :)
