Habitually Good

During the last week of last year (its 2009 now), we had a mini vacation where we planned to visit the Corbett National Park followed by a days rest at Ranikhet before coming back home to daily hustle and bustle. As usual, I took a lot of photographs. What follows is the story of our trip.

The Planning

As many people would know, the main part of Corbett is the so called Dhikala region. The sad part about this is that you can only gain entry into this region two ways:

• Either have a booking in a Forest Rest House within Dhikala.
• Or have a 4 hour trip on one of the Safari Vans (called Canters) for which you typically have to stand in line as there are limited seats.

There is absolutely no other way to get in (and believe me, we tried). So, we decided that we will have to settle with Bijrani – the second most popular of the zones in Corbett. Even to get a day trip into Bijrani, you still need a permit and this has to be obtained in advance. Finally, there is the question of accommodation.

So, how does one do all this sitting in Gurgaon. Enter Kostubh Pandey. This guy did everything for us. It is strange that for a country which offers IT services to the rest of the world, how un-savvy and underdeveloped most service providers in India are from the IT perspective. Kostubh has taken advantage of this void and created a very strong online presence. This is what enabled us to find him.

While the arrangements he made for us were not 5 star, they weren’t too shabby either. We got clean beds, good food, and good hosts during our stay. And that is all you want from a Jungle Safari trip.

The Safari

We left Delhi at around 5 in the morning and though we met a lot of fog on the way, we arrived before 11 am. i highly recommend leaving early to beat all the traffic that you would otherwise encounter. The road was good mostly except this really bad stretch before Moradabad.

(you can click on the photos to view larger versions)

We arrived in RamNagar and were met by Kostubh who took us to our ‘resort’ called Wild Trail. At the resort we were met by Tyson who was actually quite friendly and adorable.

Immediately, there was a sense of peace because of the clean morning air that greeted us. The staff greeted us with Tea and Coffee followed by freshly made lunch. This put us in the right mind for our safari that afternoon.

The best way to take a safari in Corbett is in one of the open jeeps that are available for hire (ours were arranged by Kostubh). You hop on to the jeep, they are open in the back and you get a 360 degree view of your surroundings. The flip side is that you get very cold. There were 7 of us and we managed to fit into 1 jeep along with a guide and a driver.

The open nature of the jeep also adds a sense of adventure because you are basically exposed to the Jungle. What if you do see a tiger and it decides to charge? I noticed that these jeeps usually carry a large stick. Imagine trying to beat a tiger back with a stick.

The Jungle at Corbett is very beautiful. There are parts of the Jungle where you feel that you never want to leave. It is pity that a lot of people who visit Corbett each year miss out on this beauty in their drive to spot a tiger.

The terrain varies between open river beds which dry up in Winters, steep hills, dense forest with green vegetation, and dry grassland. You can keep driving around the forest and not meet another car (thanks to the limited number that they let in every day). I suggest that you hire a petrol jeep instead of diesel as it is less noisy.

If you are only interested in looking for the big cat, then you don’t have to do anything special. Just sit back and let the guide do the work for you.

However, there is so much more to Corbett then the tiger, and if you are interested in that, then you need to let the guide know. For example, these guides will not stop for bird watching and you need to let them know specifically if you want that.

We saw a great number of beautiful birds, but were able to photograph very few of them because the guide didn’t stop, and by the time we would ask the person to stop, the birds had flown away.

I do have to mention that the jungle is very dusty in parts and you will definitely mess up your camera equipment unless you are extremely careful. I had my camera coated with dust at the end of the first day. From their onwards I kept it inside my jacket till I had to take a picture.

Corbett has over 150 tigers, and so you would think that the chances of spotting one should be good. And you would be wrong. We went around for 3 days looking for pug marks in the ground so that we could track down the beast and after a while we found our own pug marks to be more exciting.

It became such a disaster for us that on the last day we didn’t even hear a single jungle sound which would betray the movement or position of a tiger. It wasn’t a total loss for us though, as were able to spot some very pretty birds and some other animals as you can see below:

The hawk-eagle above kept making noises as we waited for a tiger to show up.

This bird kept hopping around our jeep as we were hoping for the jungle to make a sound to reveal the presence of a tiger.

This Sambhar baby was accompanied by its very cautious parents as they crossed the road while we were waiting.

We saw other birds, eagles, elephants, deer, boars, etc. It was a very fun trip and I loved every moment of it. We will go back next year because we didn’t keep our meeting with the big cat.

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