Abby's Tabbies

By Abigail

From Agra to Bandhavgarh we took a night train. It was probably the worst night’s sleep I have ever had. Period. I mean, there’s no question about it. From the beginning, I knew that it was going to be a horrible ride. Well, not the ride part – I meant, the night. The whole time we were whizzing by all of these rocks, and fields, and whatever, I was just sitting on the top bunk, knowing that this was going to be the worst night of sleep of my life. It was worse than I thought. Usually, it is “LB” (Luxury Boy) that is disappointed in our hotel. Most of the time, I can endure whatever comes. This time, not so much.

We met a few people on the train. I guess they had come from a wedding and, well, that’s all that I could make out of the discussion. There were five kids, of all ages. I wondered whether they had ever met a white person before. I’d guess not. We had our dinner of dal soup (well, that is, not me – I had rice), some chickeny I- don’t-know-what, and of course topped off with the sour old whatchamacallit, that I think is called curd. We went to bed very late – almost 10:30. The bed set up was kind of weird. There were three levels of bunks, and three bunks on each side of the central area. Plus, two more bunks across the aisle. The four of us were with two strangers (who seemed nice enough, but didn’t speak English). I slept on the top of one side, Grayson was in the middle, and Mom was on the bottom. Dad was with the two Indian guys on the other side.

I guess Indian people go to bed late, or so it seems, because the whole night that we were on the train, there must have been thirty people awake out of the 65 or 75 people in the train car. For the first hour and a half, we had four people in the bunk across the aisle from us playing poker. They had their light blasting, and it was horrible, especially me, who was six inches away from the light. Usually, I can deal with light, but not when it is a foot away from me. The next two hours, we had half the people of our car find that it was a fantastic time to talk to their friends and get up and move around and settle back to another place. We had lots of fun, because for the rest of the night, there was a baby crying. It cried all night long, not stopping. Luckily, I probably slept an hour. I’m saying luckily, because both my parents did not sleep more than half an hour. In the morning, we all woke up and agreed that somebody should have taken that baby out to the space between cars, and made it be quiet there. After all, it was only one out of the whole car, and it was keeping everyone awake. I don’t know if Indians are used to that, but whatever they’re used to, it’s not what I’m used to.

By the time we arrived in Umaria, it must have been about 5:30 am. We felt nice and fresh. (Joking.) I was yawning like crazy when we got into our car, to drive to Bandhavgarh National Park. When we got to the hotel, I found that not only did I stay cold, but I grew increasingly cold. It must have been that the driver either had the A/C on or the window open, both of which seemed to be crazy ideas to me. I stayed cold the whole time in Bandhavgarh. Really cold. On our second safari drive, I wore so many clothes that I could barely walk. I wore both of my long pairs of pants, 2 pairs of wool socks, 3 long-sleeve shirts, my jacket, and my beanie. That’s only the beginning. We also drank steaming hot tea and snuggled under a thick blanket. Most people think of India as hot. But not Bandhavgarh. It must have been 45 degrees, and we were driving in an open Jeep.

Our first drive in the park was after lunch, from 3 until 6 pm. I wish that it had been longer. When we were driving into the outskirts of the park to our hotel, we had seen spotted deer, or chital. Now, as we entered the park gate, we saw hundreds of them. OK, not hundreds, but a lot. They weren’t like the gazelle or zebra in Tanzania, they’re more like the deer at home which stand it clumps of five or six. Actually, we heavily relied on these deer to tell us whether a tiger was nearby. When one was close, and the chitals either smelled it or saw it, they would let out a bleeting warning call. The monkeys would see the tiger too, and give their warning. Soon, all the animals in the forest would know that a tiger was nearby. The sambar, which are things that look like elk, would call too. And the whole forest would be gone. Unfortunately, our guide told us that when the chital gave the warning, it wasn’t for sure a tiger. It could be a leopard, a sloth bear, or even humans. But the sambar were more reliable, only calling when it was a tiger.

Luckily, we did get to hear the chital call, but not the sambars. The monkeys called too, but we only heard them sometimes. As we raced towards the sound, we could see tons of little white vehicles all parked waiting. These vehicles are very funny. They’re not like the ones in Africa, which are meant for safaris with tops that can be opened, etc. etc. These were basically pickup trucks with seats stuck in the back. Anyway, we were all parked, waiting. After a while, our guide decided that the tiger had laid down somewhere, and that we’d go out and check back later, so we went out and made kind of a loop. When we came back, all of the cars’ people were standing and pointing. We drove in for a closer look. It was a large black thing, moving slowly. We raced towards it with about 15 (15 is a small #! When people see a tiger about 20 other cars come!!) other cars. We stopped, and looked through binoculars. I was first to take a turn with the binoculars. I zoomed in. What I saw made me sit down on my chair, and laugh so hard I could barely give the binocs to Mom. “What is it?” she asked. When I refused to answer, she raised the binocs, then sat down herself. “It’s a wild boar!” she said. It was so funny. I couldn’t believe that we had raced over there to see a little wild boar.

There was only one day that we actually sighted tiger. Tigers, I should say. We saw five of them! It was so surprising, because on our second drive, early in the morning the next day, we were driving really fast over this bridge and then up a tiny hill. Dad asked us to stop and go back about 50 meters. There, in the grass, maybe 50 meters away, lay a huge male tiger. I don’t know how our guide knew this, but as soon as he saw it, he jumped up in the car and gave a loud, fake, alarm call. He told us that it was called B2. That’s what I don’t know. It’s amazing how people know each individual animal. Within five minutes, at least a dozen cars had surrounded us, and all the tourists were standing up, binoculars and cameras in hand. Somehow, it’s always Dad who spots things: in the ‘Crater, he spotted a pride of lions, in the Serengeti, he spotted the cheetah. Now, he spotted the tiger. It’s so cool.

I don’t know who, but somebody in another car happened to glance across the road in the other direction, and into another part of the forest. We all turned, to see a massive female tiger and her three cubs walk just past the tree line. As I said, we had just gone over a bridge. So everyone watched as she swam across the river with her three cubs. We all drove over to meet her, as she crossed the road. We got so close to her that you could actually see the muscles that surrounded her. It seemed like she was just posing, staring straight at us and right into the camera. As soon as she disappeared on the other side of the road, everyone turned their gaze to the brush, where the three cubs were hiding. “Cubs are coming, cubs are coming!” our guide said. We all looked, and we could see three little cubs playing in the brush. They were quite young, maybe three or four months old. Though they’re quite a big cat, they still had the minds of small ones. Their mother was calling from across the road, and the bravest one crept forward. Just as he was about to cross the road, the noise from an engine scared him. He turned around and fled back into the brush. After that, we barely saw anything of the cubs. We just saw fleeting shapes in the bushes. We all turned around, as the mother came up from the river and crossed in front of us. It wasn’t as close as the first one, but we still got very close to her. In a few seconds, she was gone back into the brush.

That was almost the last of our tiger sightings. We turned around and drove back to B2. We watched him for a while, but decided that he wouldn’t do anything, because it was nearing the middle of the day. So, we left him and went searching for more tigers. We shouldn’t have left him, because after that we didn’t see another tiger the whole time we were at Bandhavgarh. Yes, we were close to having seen another, but we got there just as it had vanished into the grass, or just as it had lain back down, or . . . . .

On our last day, we discovered a kill. A leopard, probably, our guide said, had killed the deer the previous night but had been scared away when a tiger came. We looked around in the morning, and came back in the afternoon, but we didn’t see the tiger that we had heard a lot of alarm calls about around there. As we were heading away from the kill on our last day, we saw two jackals. We barely saw them, just as running blobs. Well, I guess you could tell that they were jackals, but they sure looked like wolves (They have them in the park!), or Asian wild-dogs. It barely satisfied me.

Even though we only saw tigers on one day, I was still satisfied. Besides, we saw five of them.