Tiger, Tiger…Bijrani, Uttar Pradesh, India

Tiger, Tiger…
Bijrani, Uttar Pradesh, India

Mr. Imran Khan seems to know everything about tigers. I hardly expected to engage myself in an academic conversation about tigers on a planned luxury holiday – out with the boys where our interests were to “chill out”, as they say over the weekend. Still, I was rather pleased to have met someone at Corbett Hideaway Resort.

I engaged Mr. Khan in a conversation about white tigers. While he fittingly rattled on to confirm my beliefs, I flashbacked to a similar conversation with another man. A year ago when I was answering queries for travelers wishing to know anything about India, many tourists wanted information about where to spot white tigers. As I tried gathering the answer to their question, I called up a few wildlife experts on tigers. I recall driving one expert wild on my impertinent query, “Where can one spot white tigers?”

The wildlife expert was from Sanctuary Magazine, a leading wildlife publication of the country. His calm response had a tone of condescending scorn as if I had violated some basic human right by using the word white. Then he spoke calming explaining that there is “no such species as white tigers. White tigers are a result of genetic disorder.”

I thought this guy was saying that people are going crazy asking and looking for a creature that they find beautiful because they are unaware this beauty is an end result of nature’s defect. Or, I reflected, is it simply because people find extraordinary defects beautiful? I decided not to engage Mr. Khan with my thoughts on beauty and instead, stick to tigers.

Mr. Khan is working on Project Tiger at Jim Corbett National Park. He is also the chief naturalist at the Corbett Hideaway Resort, where he enlightens and imparts knowledge to visitors staying at the resort. When he’s alone, you can see him working hard on his PhD thesis on tigers.

It was at Corbett that the Tiger Project was launched in 1974 in an endeavour to save this majestic animal from extinction. Earlier in the summer of 1989, I had stayed within the park’s state-run cottages, had driven through the park and taken the standard jeep safari. Other than the consolation of seeing the tiger’s pug marks, all I spotted was a tusker. As we got slightly close to photographing the giant, my paranoid uncle jumped up and down screaming at all of us to run. The tall tusker almost chased away our small dinky Maruti Suzuki cars.

This time around when I managed to lay my hands on a junket, I grabbed the opportunity to visit Corbett, gathered four friends and we took the road out of Delhi. After many a beer (except my friend, Yaghvendra, who adheres to “no alcohol” while driving or flying passengers), the rule I would advise one and all to stick to is DO NOT buy beer along the highways of Uttar Pradesh. A bottle of beer is almost thrice as expensive as compared to Delhi and the unheard of beer brand is thrice as shady!

We had hit the periphery of the park by late noon. Prior to reaching the Corbett Hideaway Resort and living up the weekend with plenty more beers, we decided to stop at the park entrance at Bijrani to gather as much information as required to get into the park. With all our excitement to catch a tiger and tell a tale, we were afraid the resort wouldn’t offer much information. Our apprehensions were proved incorrect with Mr. Khan’s expertise.

At Bijrani, which is the southeast entrance point to the park, we made our first pit stop before moving on to dump our bags. We were pursued patiently by touts and safari operators offering jeep safari and hotel accommodation deals. We were offered plenty more by the young men who saw us as five yuppie young Dilliwallas and veered the conversations from wildlife to wilder life of providing women for entertainment. So that was as much as we could gather at the park from sarkari babus and touts on our way to the resort. Finally, we headed to unload ourselves at the Claridges Corbett Hideaway.

Jim Corbett Park was special to all of us in many ways. There were memories from school which kept flashing up for the two days we were there. Almost all of us had been to a boarding school at Nainital. Every year around Easter we had a short break. The boarders weren’t allowed to go home. Instead, they were to go on a compulsory trek. They could choose their groups and destinations within a limited distance and time but even a resident of Nainital was not expected to run home.

The area beyond the southeast entrance of Corbett Park, along the river Kosi – specifically Garjia and Mohan – was our school pricipal’s favourite haunt every Easter. For most boys at school the unique selling proposition to undertake the trip with the principal wasn’t spotting tigers or the natural scenic beauty offered by forests and greens running by a glistening riverbed or any such factor. The key that pulled the crowd for a trek to Garjia and Corbett Park was all the schoolgirls who went along with the principal.

As students we were on an ultra-low budget. We always wanted to peer into the luxury resorts and see what they were all about. So here we were, five of us gathered from school ten years later at the best resort of the lot – Hideaway Resort at Corbett – ready to experience luxury amidst the wildlife. It didn’t take us any time to dive straight into the pool and live out that picture perfect Club Med holiday brochure with beer mugs on the bar stools in the pool (minus the pretty women).

The next day as we entered the park at dawn, hoping we would spot the big cat, we realized this might not be easy because of the park’s thick undergrowth and tall grass. Thinking about jumping off the jeep at points, one of the probable reasons that discouraged us was the incident told by our friend, Arun. As he and a group of students moved into the park, everyone ran out from the guest house and scattered along the park into smaller groups. While the boys were on this adventure, someone suddenly gave a scare call “tiger tiger” and every one split up. Some boys were lost for hours. They were extremely lucky to find their way back as they walked along the river.

Our jeep safari ventured further into the park. Most visible animals were chital and sambar (the largest deer in Asia) and a few barking deers. We were spotted by several black-faced monkey (langur) and a woodpecker.

As we approached the climax, the guide, Mr. Pradhan, introduced us to what a tiger dropping looks like and later spotted the pugmarks of a tiger. Pradhan pointed out the favourite scratching posts where tigers leave tell-tale “I was here” signatures. We hoped that the tiger saw us because we didn’t wish to leave any “I was here” signatures!

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