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India 2019 – Christmas in March


Zubbie15

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Day 11, afternoon.

This afternoon we went to Kanha Meadows, which, of the places we visited, had the most African feel to it, with open spaces, and lots of herbivores mingling together, including Barasingha and Black Buck.  While enjoying the scenery, we eventually got word that there was a sloth bear nearby.   While we headed over there, Rajan contacted @jmharack's guide, as they had yet to see a bear and really wanted to.  Thankfully, they arrived just as the bear got up from its meal of termites, at which point it crossed the road and started to look for more food.  We then had the choice to stay with the bear, or try to locate a tiger that had been seen earlier.  We went for the tiger, but while we knew what patch of bushes it was in, it never showed.  However, we were able to watch the bear cross slowly through the fields, and a couple of male Gaur make threatening noises and gestures at each other.  Eventually @jmharack and her guide showed up behind us, both looking very happy to have seen a bear after lots of searching.  We eventually made our way out, hearing lots of alarm calls at several locations but never finding the cause of them.  Leaving the park, we stopped at Rajan’s house to write a letter to the park warden, requesting him as our forest guide for the next day’s full day safari.  Apparently without that letter we would have had to have an extra guide with us, which would have been excessive.  It was nice to also get to meet members of his family.  By the time we left it was completely dark, which offered us the chance to see a palm civet.  Rajan offered us the opportunity to do a proper night safari in the buffer zone, but by now we were tired and didn’t have the energy.

 

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Kanha Meadows

 

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There was a tiger in the woods to the left - we got a 2 second view, but it didn't come out.

 

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Indian Roller

 

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Peacock in the rain.

 

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Male Barasingha.  

 

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Baby Barasingha.

 

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So many tiger sightings, you must be seeing them in your sleep. :)

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Haha, my guide had to tell me to stop jumping up and down when we saw the sloth bear.  We had been at Tadoba previously where every single person in our lodge had seen a sloth bear there except us, and then the same thing happened in Kanha; everyone in our lodge had seen one there too (in turn, they were really wanting to see a tiger at Kanha).  We were feeling cursed, and I really wanted to see one.  We ended up with a great viewing of this sloth bear, and spent a long time watching him/her amble around and then walk slowly across the meadow.  It was great to share the sighting with @Zubbie15

especially since he knew how much we were hoping to for one.  And in retrospect, it was particularly thoughtful that he didn't tell us in detail about his amazing sighting in Rathambore..

I think that bear was our best sighting at Kanha, and one of the best of our whole trip.

Edited by jmharack
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23 hours ago, Soukous said:

So many tiger sightings, you must be seeing them in your sleep. :)

 

We were definitely satisfied with our number of sightings!

 

15 hours ago, jmharack said:

Haha, my guide had to tell me to stop jumping up and down when we saw the sloth bear.  We had been at Tadoba previously where every single person in our lodge had seen a sloth bear there except us, and then the same thing happened in Kanha; everyone in our lodge had seen one there too (in turn, they were really wanting to see a tiger at Kanha).  We were feeling cursed, and I really wanted to see one.  We ended up with a great viewing of this sloth bear, and spent a long time watching him/her amble around and then walk slowly across the meadow.  It was great to share the sighting with @Zubbie15

especially since he knew how much we were hoping to for one.  And in retrospect, it was particularly thoughtful that he didn't tell us in detail about his amazing sighting in Rathambore..

I think that bear was our best sighting at Kanha, and one of the best of our whole trip.

I wish I'd thought to take a picture - I'm not sure who had a bigger smile, you for finally seeing a bear, or your guide for having the pressure relieved.  :D

 

Continuing with the pictures from that afternoon...

 

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This was the only time and place we saw vultures.  

 

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The bear was originally lying on his back eating the termites. He was a little far for photos, but it was fun to watch him.  It was hard not to picture Baloo from the Jungle Book.  

 

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He kindly waited until @jmharack arrived before getting up - after heading off into the woods for little bit, he came out and passed through the cars.

 

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It was hard to get photos with his head up.

 

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Once he'd headed off, we moved along to try to find a tiger that had been sighted near-by.  No luck, but we did enjoy this Gaur (and another) bellowing at each other. 

 

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Off he goes!

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Day 12, morning.

Our last full day of safari, and to go out with (hopefully) a bang we had arranged a full day safari.  The nice thing about this was that in Kanha full-day safaris permit early entry (we entered about 20 minutes early – the “normal” drive people who were in front of the line seemed a little annoyed!) – so we were in the park at 5:55, with it being almost dark.  With this headstart, we didn’t see another vehicle for 90 minutes.  Unfortunately, despite Rajan’s best efforts, and several sets of very fresh pugmarks, all the tigers were hiding during the morning.  We did get one very quick glimpse of a tiger in the bushes, but it disappeared quite quickly.  It seemed a lot of vehicles were getting brief glimpses of tigers as they crossed the road, and it just so happened on this morning we would arrive a couple of minutes after the crossing.  It happens.  We ended up staking out a spot where a mother tiger had been seen crossing the road – she had older cubs as well, so there was the possibility that we would see multiple tigers.  We hoped, once all the morning drivers left, that the quiet might bring her/them out, but with no luck.  We eventually decided to do a little tour around, and see if we could find anything else going on, but all in all it was a very quiet morning.

 

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Trying to be artsy while waiting for a tiger to (hopefully) appear.

 

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@Zubbie15 Hmm I'm not seeing the images in this last post? Can see all the other posts...

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3 hours ago, janzin said:

@Zubbie15 Hmm I'm not seeing the images in this last post? Can see all the other posts...

Odd, thanks for pointing this out Janet. I uploaded this during a thunderstorm, and the internet wasn't working great, it must have affected the photo upload. I'll try to fix it tonight. 

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Trying the day 12 morning pictures again... 

 

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Day 12, afternoon.

We had almost 6 hours, during the middle of the day, where the only other vehicles we saw were a Wildlife Institute of India research car, and a few park rangers.  It felt like we had the park to ourselves.  Unfortunately, this was also the case in relation to the larger predators – despite spending a lot of time staking out where that mother tiger was, and further checking other waterholes in the area that were popular with various tigers, we didn’t even hear any alarm calls.  This may have been partly due to the weather, as we had some drops of rain, and distant thunder.  One slightly annoying thing that happened as the afternoon cars arrived was that every guide wanted to stop and chat with Rajan to know what we had (or hadn’t, in our case) seen.  This seemed to take up a decent amount of time. One of the last cars to arrive told Rajan they’d seen a tiger dart across the road a little further back – he decided to give up on our stakeout of the mother to see if we could locate that one instead.  We heard some alarm calls, but they seemed to be getting more distant so we made our way off, heading back to where the mother tiger was. 

 

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Hoopoe.  He seemed to know where we were, and exactly where would make a good picture - and kept out of that range.  This pics fairly heavily cropped.

 

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Jackal coming along.  There was actually a pair of them.

 

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The Chital had some small fawns, so they were pretty spooked by the jackals.  I find this picture gives a good feel for how effective their camouflage is!

 

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Flameback.  Nothing at all special about this photo, but we spent a lot of effort trying to get a good picture of the flamebacks and the racket-tailed drongos that were fairly common, but neither species were cooperative for photos.  The drongos in particular were very skilled at posing, and then flying off as we raised our cameras.

 

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Day 12, afternoon (continued)

 

Well, of course in that time she had come out, and was lying in the middle of the road. Ugh, why didn’t she do that while we were there alone!  In any case, all the vehicles in the area were there, and the road was quite narrow, so getting a view was a challenge.  This was the one time we saw Rajan really push to get around other drivers – I think he felt some pressure given that we were now more than 10 hours into a full-day drive with nothing major to show, although we are experienced enough at this point to know that it happens, and to just enjoy being on safari. In any case, I think the crowds affected the tiger, as she got up, headed one way for a minute, then ran back the other way into some thick bushes and didn’t come out again.  We did end up with pretty good, if brief, views of her, but it certainly would have been fun to have her for ourselves.  From there we made our way slowly to the gate – the full day safari also allows a departure that’s 15-20 minutes after everyone else, so by the time we exited (~6:45) it was almost full dark.  Unfortunately, as seemed to be the case a lot in Kanha, we heard lots of alarm calls on the way, but no luck finding the source.

 

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There she is, finally!

 

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There were a lot of vehicles here, and I think it really bothered her.  She looked around for a couple of minutes, but then retreated back into some bushes.

 

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Good night, Kanha.

 

Just a note about the full-day safari - even though it wasn't as productive as we might have hoped, I really enjoyed it.  I'm pretty sure that apart from park staff, we were the only ones in the park for most of the day.  And getting in early and leaving late extended the time where we felt alone.  On our way out, Rajan had us sign what was essentially a guest book for the park.  I didn't think at the time (we were pretty tired) to ask, but assuming all full day safaris sign, we were the first ones since December 2018 to do a full-day safari in Kanha.  So it seems to be something that's less common than in some of the other parks, but I felt it was worth it (and would have been even more so if we'd had a good tiger to ourselves!).

 

Edited by Zubbie15
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Day 13.The park warden decided on this day to move up opening to 6AM, so everyone was in a little earlier than before. This was the coolest morning we had at Kanha, I actually needed my fleece a bit.  As became standard for us, we found lots of pugmarks, but no tigers.  My wife had really wanted to see Black Buck while we were here, and while we’d had some distant ones previously today we wanted to find some closer.  Not an easy process, given there are only ~40 in the park, and only half of those are outside the fenced breeding area.  But Rajan managed to find a male and female for us, and we spent a lot of time watching them, and enjoying the Kanha Meadows area in general.  Once they wandered too far away, we went off to a cluster of vehicles we could see not too far away.  One gypsy had briefly seen a female, and the hope was she would reappear.  Somewhat unfortunately, the clustering of cars drew a ranger, and then some mahuts on 3 elephants appeared. Rajan directed them to the rough area where the tiger was; they found her, and also located two of her cubs in the same area.  However, Rajan was convinced that the ranger radioed the mahuts and told them to try to ensure the tigers didn’t come out toward the cars (not sure the mechanism of that, but he was convinced), and while we waited as long as we could, they never came out.  After a quick stop for breakfast and to look at the museum, we needed to leave the park.  

 

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Lovely early morning in Kanha, the dust really helped make for a beautiful sunrise.

 

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The blackbuck was fairly close to the road this morning, but definitely preferred to show us his backside.  It took a while to have him (and the female he was with) get comfortable with our presence, but we persevered. 

 

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Our only elephants of the trip, obviously not wild. 

 

Once we left the park, we had a 36 hour odyssey to get home – drive to Raipur, fly Raipur to Delhi, a few hours in Delhi to wash up, then long flight to London (lengthened by the closure of the airspace over Pakistan), then transfer to our flight to North America, and finally drive home.

 

I'll have a couple more general posts, but that just about wraps it up.

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Birds

 

Just  a note, if you are participating in a BY, or are a hardcore twitcher, you might want to stop reading. :D  Ok, you've been warned.  We aren't hardcore birders by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly don't keep detailed life-lists or anything. I also found that when we told our guides that we weren't serious birders, they took it to mean that we weren't interested in birds at all (which we didn't fight).  So, having said that, we came away with roughly 81 birds identified on this trip.  We went to a lot of the same areas as @jmharack, and she and her husband are much more serious birders, so she might be able to give a more accurate idea of the number of birds one could tick if they tried harder than we did.  In any case, here a few last photos that didn't really fit in earlier posts.

 

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Edited by Zubbie15
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Mammals

I think we ended up seeing all the animals we could have realistically expected (maybe some other smaller rodents, I guess, could have been possible).  Our overall list was as follows:

 

1.     Tiger (17 – 9 in Ranthambhore, 5 in Tadoba, 3 in Kanha)

2.     Sloth Bear – 7 (3 Ranthambhore, 3 Tadoba, 1 Kanha)

3.     Dhole – 2 (Tadoba)

4.     Leopard – 2 (Ranthambhore, Tadoba)

5.     Chittal/Spotted Deer

6.     Sambar

7.     Gaur

8.     Indian Gazelle

9.     Chousingha (4 Horned Antelope)

10.  3-striped Palm Squirrel

11.  Barasingha

12.  Black Buck

13.  Nilgai/Blue Buck

14.  Unidentified bat (at Kanha gate)

15.  Jackal

16.  Common Palm Civet

17.  Wild Boar

18.  Ruddy Mongoose

19.  Slender Mongoose

20.  Langur

21.  Rhesus Macaque

 

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Final thoughts

We really enjoyed our trip to India, and seeing tigers in the wild is hard to beat.  Certainly the wildlife viewing, and the way safaris run, is different from what we’ve experienced in Africa, which took a bit of getting used to, but in the end it was fine for us.  We did joke at one point that we wished we could see tigers in Africa, though.  We thought the guys at Wild World India did everything we could hope for, and more. Abhishek was great at dealing with all the issues that came up, from finding a last minute drive to get us to Ranthambhore in time for our first drive, to finding us a new flight to Delhi on our last day after all flights from Jabalpur were cancelled, to many little things.  And Vikram’s insistence that we go to Ranthambhore over Bandhavgarh, despite the extra travel that entailed, really paid off (especially after hearing the issues @jmharack had in Bandhavgarh, although I guess @madaboutcheetah overlapped with her and didn't have any issues so it all depends).  The hotels we stayed at were all top notch, the guides undoubtedly knew their stuff inside and out, and the wildlife was new and exotic.  However, while we greatly enjoyed this trip, we didn’t fall in love like we did on our first trip to Africa.  Whereas I’m always looking for excuses to go to Africa, I think it’ll be a few years (until our children are reasonably old enough to do the trip) before we consider India again.  Although, I do already find myself looking at flights back to India (did you know Qatar Airways flies direct Doha to Nagpur?  I found that out recently, and would definitely take advantage of that if we were heading back to the Central India parks).  Having had a bit of time to think about it, I think the best comparison I can make is to the Ngorongoro Crater in Northern Tanzania.  Like India, it’s got great wildlife opportunities, and lots of people – and when I’m there I’m not completely sure how I feel. However, with a bit of time to think about it, and go through the pictures, my hesitations go away and I look forward to returning.  I'll leave you with a bunch of tiger pics - thanks to all that followed along, and liked/commented.

 

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Edited by Zubbie15
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Fabulous report and what looks like an incredible trip--you did quite well with 17 tigers and 7--SEVEN!! Sloth bears!!  Yes, its very different than Africa and but both have their charms...

 

This is my favorite of your tiger pics...

 

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Funny what you say about not being in a rush to return to India. I kind of thought that too after my 1st trip...but soon we are going back for the 3rd time...and really hope someday to do the Goa trip that @Soukous is planning, which would make 4 :) Oh and then there's Satpura which @TonyQ has made so enticing in his recent report...I foresee several more trips to India! (In fact, maybe I should just get the 10-year visa this time!)

 

 

 

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Thank you for an excellent report. You photos are stunning and I really enjoyed your writing.

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Thanks @janzin and @TonyQ!

 

On 7/26/2019 at 4:03 PM, janzin said:

Funny what you say about not being in a rush to return to India. I kind of thought that too after my 1st trip...but soon we are going back for the 3rd time...

 

I think our problem is that we have too many other places we want to go, and not enough vacation.  And the list keeps getting longer from reports on this site, and discussions with fellow travelers of places they've really enjoyed - we need to win the lottery someday... :)

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Thanks for sharing. Your photography is brilliant. That one of the baby sloth bar looking over it’s mom back is my personal pick

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Thanks @lmSA84 for the kind words. The mother bear and cubs was a special sighting, but the pictures were pure luck. Between her constantly moving , the cubs wrestling on her back, and the trees that kept coming between us, there were a lot of photos that got deleted!  It’s always nice to find that one worked out.

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Alexander33

@Zubbie15

 

Thanks for a very inspiring report.  

 

On 7/28/2019 at 5:46 AM, Zubbie15 said:

I think our problem is that we have too many other places we want to go, and not enough vacation.  And the list keeps getting longer from reports on this site, and discussions with fellow travelers of places they've really enjoyed - we need to win the lottery someday... :)

 

I know how you feel!  Now I’ve got to carry-through with India — and  it’s so big and varied, I’m certain it will take a number of trips before I feel I’ve even come close to doing it justice. One step at a time, I guess. 

 

Thanks, again, for for sharing your experience. 

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