Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve Day 1...

Tiger Safari- Day One:

Bandhavgarh is set up into four zones and each vehicle is assigned a zone for each drive so some areas don’t become too congested. There are 11 vehicles allowed per zone.

As soon as we got in to the park we saw several peacocks. Nice, but not what we are here for. On the safari we have also seen jackals, owls, a lot of spotted deer and sambar deer. In the morning we saw a mahout on his elephant. It was pretty neat as he rode passed us. The park has a dozen or so mahouts on elephants within the park. The jungle is quite dense and the people can’t see the tigers in the thick bush so the mahout rides around through the jungle making lots of noise in the hopes that he flushes out the tigers on to the road or open area so that the people can get a glimpse of one.

On the morning drive we were on route B,D and we drove by three sets of tiger tracks. They were easily outsmarting us as we would drive by once and see tracks on one side of the road, then by the time we doubled back only 15 or 20 minutes later, we noticed a second set of tiger tracks on the road. One of the tigers that was in the area has three cubs under 5 months old, so we were pretty excited about the opportunity of seeing her and her babies, but no such luck.

Anyway, that’s it for day one, so the score for the first day is tigers 1, photographers- 0.

You can see my Indian wildlife pictures here.