Central India Dec. 24 - Jan. 15 2008

2. Central India


  I took an autorickshaw to the Haifa hotel. They only had one room left and I didn't want to look for another place so I took it. It was $18, which was a lot to me but it was one of the nicest rooms I've ever had in my whole travelling career. Besides, it was Christmas Day and I wanted to treat myself. No peeling paint, very clean and large room, balcony, hot water, TV and even room service. I took advantage of that and had Christmas breakfast in bed. I finally made it outside in the afternoon and walked around. After a night train I always feel drained. Even though I slept a little on the train it’s hard to get a decent sleep and I always have to take a nap after arriving on a night train.
Varanasi is the city of Shiva and India's holiest city. The main attraction are the Ghats, steps leading into the Ganges river where pilgrims come from all over to bath in, wash clothes, get cremated and lots of other things. This is the India I was picturing, where all my stereotypes would come true.
  There are animals and shit everywhere.Thankfully they use the cow and buffalo shit for fuel after adding a little water and molding it into hamburger paddy shapes and leaving it out to dry in the sun. There's also dogs and many, many cute puppies, goats wearing sweaters (I shit you not!), rhesus macaques, squirrels and mongooses. There are two cremation ghats where up to 150 people a day are being cremated. It’s really interesting to see them carry the wrapped up body on a bamboo stretcher before putting it on a huge log pile and burning it. Cremation is almost a science here with the exact amount of wood required to burn the body weighed out and charged accordingly.
My first stereotype to come true was the snake charmer. I have been wanting to see this for years and thought I have to see this in India somewhere. The snake charmer was middle aged, skinny,wearing ratty and dirty clothes and had long hair and a really long beard. He had two small cobras in clay pots. He opened them up and played his snake charmer flute and they stood there, absorbed in the vibrations. Snakes have no ears so they don't hear the melody. He also played it through his nose which resulted in some nasty snot being blown all over his beard. He offered me to hold the cobras which were very mellow. I touched them but declined on holding them for now. I didn't have my camera and no small change so I will go back to see him again.
  The next stereotype to come true was to see a live sitar concert. I thought the sitar would be more prevalent but it’s not. I didn’t hear any sitar on the radios, just a lot of dancy Bollywood crap. The sitar and tabla player were both really talented and it was a great hour long show. I took my first sitar lesson yesterday and learned a lot already. I planned to stay for five days and take a lesson everyday. I'm basically only staying in Varanasi to take sitar lessons. I like the city but I wouldn't stay that long without the lessons holding me here. I got into the music of sitar guru Ravi Shankar in 1997 and bought a sitar in 2003. I never learned how to play it but it has been an interesting wall ornament and conversation piece. Now that I was in India, where my sitar was built, I figured this to be the perfect place to take lessons.
 
Back to Christmas day, I ran into Jimmy and Sara, a British couple I met my second day in India in Kolkata. I had lunch with them and then we went on a night boat ride on the Ganges at 6pm. It was nice to spend Christmas with some people I 'knew'. Earlier in the day I met Grady, an American. We got to talking and met up later for dinner. Just when I thought I would be alone on Christmas I end up spending the day with people, that’s what I love about travelling, all the pleasant unexpectedness. It was much better Christmas than last year. Last year I was in Madagascar and spent 8 hours of Christmas day in a crammed minivan and the rest of the day by myself eating and hanging out in my hotel room because it was rainy and kind of chilly outside.
 
But Varanasi isn't all shits and giggles (so to speak). Varanasi is an amazing city and very colorful and lively but it’s also very, very annoying and mentally tiring. Walking along the ghats is the main activity for foreigners, which there are a lot of here. Locals know this and constantly pester and bother you for boat rides, massages, candles, flowers, drugs,hotel rooms and numerous other things. I usually don't go more than a few minutes without turning down some offer. I have given up on the verbal response, no more 'no thank you'. I just casually swing my head back and forth indicating no interest. Some of them are persistent, following me around and asking after I say ' no thank you'. The kids are no better and sometimes are worse than the adults. They try to sell flowers and postcards mostly and are persistent little buggers. I find when I walk in a group, especially with female foreigners, we are harassed a lot more. Alone they usually aren't as persistent with me. Though, the frequency of hassles declined the longer I stayed, maybe some of the same people recognized me and knew I wasn’t interested.
 
Behind the ghats are narrow alleyways too small for a car. These are very interesting and there's plenty of restaurants, silk shops, music shops and hotels. There is less hassle here. Finding a decent hotel has been a bit of a challenge. I switched from my room to a more affordable $13 room in the same hotel but just as nice. I got a call from the hotel 10.30pm on Dec. 26. They informed me that I would be checking out the next day because they were fully booked. I was kicked out of there and had to starting looking for a new place. There's so many places to stay and many of them are cheap backpacker dives, which I do look like I'm looking for, but this time I'm not. Rooms ranged from $2.50 to $5 but I'm looking for something more in the $7 to $10 range. I'm in the city and only have meals and sitar lessons as expenses so I can spend a bit more for a nice room. When I'm in a national park I will settle for a cheap room because I'm spending most of my money in the park but here I wanted a room I really liked. I kept looking, walking along the ghats. My nice hotel was at one end of the ghats and a 30 minute walk from where all the action was. As I'm walking with my two packs,a combined weight of around 25 kg,I walk over a wet area and slip on some green slime, with my left knee taking most of the impact. It cut open and bruised badly. Now, I'm covered in this green slimy shit and still have to find a room. I check out two places I wanted to stay but they were full. I finally find a clean and ok room for 5$ at the Reva Guesthouse and it will do for one night. I take a shower and wash my clothes and then go out for breakfast at 11am. I left my other room at am and I was getting tired of looking by the time I took the room at Reva guesthouse.
 
 
This morning I checked out of Reva and went to Alakhnanda guesthouse, which was recommended to me by some other travellers I met. I have nice room with river view, TV, hot water and bargained the price to $7.50 a night for 4 nights.I’m so happy to have a room I like, which to me is more important than having a cheap 2 dollar cell of a room just to save money.I’m sharing the room with a couple of small mice. As I lie in bed and read or watch TV, I see them nervously exploring my room looking for food. They eat anything sweet I have lying around like crackers or cookies but leave the oranges, guava or any other fruit alone. I guess they only have a sweet tooth. While I laid in bed my first night I saw some mosquitos buzzing around in the glow of the TV. I put up my mosquito net which I always take with me on every trip after my first trip to the Peruvian Amazon in 1999 where I learned a harsh lesson about not having my own mosquito net. The mosquitos never bothered me under the net but this didn’t stop the mice. Sometimes at night I would feel them run on me over the blankets and one night one of them was so bold to actually run across my newly cropped head. That was almost too much, I don’t mind having the mice in the room, but do they have to run on my head just to get to the other side of the bed?
~
Learning the sitar is challenging but lots of fun and I’m so glad to be finally learning it. I bought some Ravi Shankar Cd's and some nice and cheap,soft cotton pants. Not everyone in Varanasi is bad though, about 10% of people who approach me on the ghats are genuine and just want to talk. But with all the dodgy folks around it’s hard to tell which is which. I have met some really nice locals who wanted nothing from me but a conversation. There are more concerts too. Every night until Jan. 1, there is something going on at various places.
  I like it here but also can't wait to leave because after Varanasi I am going to the central region where I'm going to visit two national parks famous for their tigers. I don't just hope to see a tiger, I'm not leaving until I see a tiger! I must admit I'm very happy with the amount of wildlife I have already seen, I had not expected to see this much so soon.
 
I had been in India for 5 weeks now and had been feeling healthy most of the time. I though I might not get sick but I was wrong.It all started Dec. 30 after I finished my sitar lesson. I had a slight cough and cold but nothing major, but now my stomach was a bit off so I just had veggie soup for lunch and relaxed in my room till 7pm. Around 6pm I started getting nasty diarrhea but again, that’s nothing new. I sucked it up (not literally!) and went out to eat another veggie soup but the diarrhea didn't stop. It kept me up all night running back and forth to the bathroom. It was horrible! I took a ciproflaxin in the middle of the night because I thought it would help but I think it just made things worse. At am I threw up five times. Now I felt like supreme shit. My body was so sore and achy from all the wrenching and tired from no sleep. I manage to pass out till about 11am and then got my sick ass out of bed to see a doctor.
 
Lucky for me the doctor was only five minutes walk away. He saw me right away in his tiny office/ waiting room. First, an injection of anit-nausea medicine because the medicine he's going to prescribe might make me vomit and I didn't need any more of that. My face was all sunken in and my throat raw and hard to talk. I think this is a new high of the worst I've ever felt. The only thing I didn't have was a high fever, actually, I had a low temperature. The doctor asked if I wanted my blood/stool tested for malaria, dengue, typhoid, parasites, all the nasty stuff. I thought it would be a good idea so he called a tech and he came by and took my blood and stool. The doctor prescribed a cocktail of four different pills and 10 packets of oral rehydration. After lying down for almost 3 hours in the office, I finally made my way back to my hotel and crashed. I called my sitar teacher and canceled our lessons until I felt better. He understood.
 
I got up at 7.30pm and went back to the doctor because the lab results would be ready. This is very fast service here, I've waited much longer back home. This is the first time I've had all these tests taken in a foreign country (though I have had my blood tested before for malaria, which came up negative) Getting sick is one of the shitty risks I take while travelling but it’s all worth it. You really learn a lot about yourself and your body. I must say though, before my first trip to Ghana in 2004, I never really got sick for more than one day and never had to go to the doctor, but since then I've had major illnesses in Ghana,Madagascar and now India. On a finally positive note, all my lab results were negative, so that was refreshing news. It showed I had an electrolyte imbalance and a bacterial infection in my gut. That was no surprise. I went back to my room and in-between sleep watched King Kong and X Men 3 while everyone partied outside for New Years night.Firecrackers loud as shotguns rang out at midnight for 30 minutes.
 
The doctor wanted me back the next day at noon. I lied down on the soft bench in the waiting room while two 500 mL bottles of glucose drained into my arm through an IV. This took two hours and would help with all the fluid I had lost. All the needles were very good and as painless as a needle can be. After two days I was feeling tons better but still not 100%, so I decided to stay in Varanasi till my appetite returned and I felt well enough to travel. After I felt better I stayed a few more days to finish all the sitar lessons I planned on taking.
I'm not the only one getting sick here. I've seen four different Indians in different places throwing up in public, nasty stuff. I've also spoken to other travellers who have been ill. I sat on the toilet so much the past few days and often rested my head on my hands propped up by my elbows on my knees. Days after I left Varanasi I had shorts on and noticed that I had a bare patch of skin on my knees where there was hair before. I thought this looked kind of strange because I’m generally a hairy guy and then realized it must have been from the constant contact with my elbows. They wore the hair right off and even stopped it from growing for a bit.
 
 
I finally felt well enough to begin travelling again, 6 days after I first felt sick.I finished all my planned sitar lessons and was more than ready to leave Varanasi. Although I liked Varanasi, staying 11 days anywhere that isn't a rainforest is too much for me. My overnight train left right on time at 8.30. For the first time I shared my berth with other travellers, a couple from Australia. The train was supposed to arrive in Jabalpur at am which was perfect for my planned connection to a train at 6.30am or a bus at 7. Unfortunately the train didn't arrive till 8.30am, which was really annoying because anytime the train stopped after am I had to get up to see where I was to make sure I didn't miss my stop. So I was stuck in Jabalpur for the day. I took a very nice room at the Hotel Vijan Palace which could almost pass for a room in a western hotel. I ate a room service breakfast and had a paper brought to my door. I crashed for a few hours because I felt like I was still on the train being tossed around.
 
I came to Jabalpur to use it as a base for exploring Kanha national park and Bandhavgarh national park which are both famous for their tigers. I spent the rest of the day visiting a picturesque gorge and then the next morning took the am express local bus from Jabalpur to Khatia village at the gate of Kanha. It was a small bus but my cramped seat was soft and it was an easy journey. The bus started off with only half the seats occupied but 4 hours into the journey the aisles were crammed with people. I arrived in exactly five and a half hours just like the guy at the tourist office told me.
 
I took a room at the Chandan motel for $5. It was a big room but very basic and kind of dingy but it was just what I was looking for. I was going to spend most of my money visiting the park. Park fees had just risen on Jan. 1 to 2150 Rupees($54) for up to 6 people and then 900 Rupees ($23) for renting a jeep for safari. These prices are for foreigners only. I couldn't find anyone interested in doing an afternoon safari and I wasn’t going to spend the money to do it alone,so I just hung out with two English guys I met. That evening I met an American couple, Harry (59) and Brigid (41), who were interested in sharing a safari in the morning. I met a nice guide/driver named Bafati who I would meet at am and then we would go pick up Harry and Brigid.
 
Bafati and I met at am. He bought me a chai tea and then we picked up Harry and Brigid. Harry was a quiet and soft spoken guy, Brigid was not and it didn't take me long to dislike her but it was worth putting up with her to save money. I especially didn't like the way she treated Harry, for example, Harry missed an opportunity to get a photo of a monkey and its little baby and Brigid told him angrily not ' to be a dumb shit!', which I think it just a little too harsh. There's so much more but I won't go into it now.
 
We arrived at the park gate at 6.15 and had to wait till it opened at 6.30. We joined a line of about 25 other jeeps filled with foreign and domestic Indian tourists, and this is the low season. During March and April and holidays there can be as many as 100 jeeps in the park and all there is to see is dust from them, Bafati told me. It sounds horrible. Even though there were a lot of jeeps in the park we didn't see very many while we drove around.They send jeeps on different set routes at first to avoid traffic jams. We drove for 2 hours and saw spotted deer, sambar deer and hanuman langurs.

Kanha national park is one of 27 project tiger reserves, covering a total area of 40,000 sq. km. Project tiger began as a conservation venture sponsored by the Indian government in 1973 to protect the dwindling tiger population. The protection has worked in Kanha and the number of tigers has been steadily increasing over the years. 1933 saw the first 250sq km of Kanha under protection and that area has now increased to 1945 sq. km. The park is also important in saving the central form of the swamp deer which was almost wiped out 100 years ago.
 
  Bafati would periodically stop to check for tiger pug marks, of which there were many on the road, and listen for alarm calls from sambar deer or monkeys. This is the science behind tiger tracking, instead of just pure luck of hoping to find one. We stopped on a bridge at about 8.30 and Bafati heard monkey alarm calls, so we headed in that direction. We rounded a bend and there he was, a large male Royal Bengal tiger lying down on the road about 20 M ahead of us. He saw us and got up and walked down the road. We kept our distance but followed slowly. He disappeared into the bush but came out again. He crossed the road and sat down on the other side, then got up and continued down the road before going back into the bush. I thought he was gone but then he came out again. I couldn't believe how long we were watching him for. He finally disappeared into the bush again for good. We were the first jeep to spot him and only one other jeep arrived but we made sure they stayed behind us. This made the encounter that more special because it wasn't a massive gathering of jeeps and working elephants as I'll tell you about later.
 
I was filled with chills and goosebumps while watching the tiger. I still get them now thinking about the experience. This has been my goal of India ever since I started really planning my trip 10 months ago and a goal of my life to see a tiger in the wild. Hey, who doesn't want to see a tiger in the wild? My eyes started to water with tears of immense joy and I had a lump in my throat. I have never felt this way upon seeing any other animal but the tiger is such a rare, beautiful,powerful and charismatic animal that it evokes this type of response. Bafati kept saying quietly, 'Take picture, take picture' because I was spending a lot of time just looking at the tiger with my eyes and appreciating what I was seeing. But I did manage to get about 9 photos. Unfortunately my camera at the time didn’t have a great zoom and the pictures aren’t as good as I would have liked them to be.
The tiger is the national animal of India but you wouldn’t know it by the way they are declining in the wild. I read an article in a magazine while in India and it claimed tiger numbers were down to just 1000 individuals, which is very sad and a huge disappointment for me in humanity. The tiger, like any other animal just wants to live in peace and harmony and we keep pushing it to the edge of extinction for what? It’s coat? Tiger penis for traditional medicine? None of it makes sense to me. I’m just glad I got to see this magnificent cat in the wild before they are all gone. There are 5 subspecies of tiger in the wild. India has 65% of the world’s royal bengal tigers. Adult males can weigh up to 230 kg and can live in a diverse range of habitats from decidous, thorn and evergreen forests to mangroves and grasslands. Their preferred prey is the sambar deer but they can survive on smaller prey and even fish in the mangroves. There are only about 6000 tigers left in the wild but even in protected areas poaching goes on, often with the consent of wildlife authorities after they’ve been bribed. Due to low salaries throughout India for park rangers, some of them are susceptible to accepting money in return for allowing illegal poaching in the park.

The rest of the drive I didn't care what I saw, I was so happy. We stopped at the visitors center to check out the museum and then drove some more. Our safari lasted till noon when the park closes for a few hours. Bafati was a great guide/driver and I believe it was a little luck and a lot of his skill which helped us find the tiger. We agreed to go on another safari the following morning.
 
I hung out with Harry and Brigid a little in the afternoon and then had dinner with them. I couldn't really get away from them, I just tried not to talk with Brigid. I didn't want to ruin things yet because we would be sharing another safari tomorrow.
 ~
I met Bafati at am and after our chai we went and picked up Harry and Brigid. It’s pretty chilly here in the morning and I wrapped myself in a blanket from the hotel. Fog blanketed the forest of Kanha which is classified as moist decidous. The main trees are sal trees which are not very tall or thick but extremely hardwood and slow growing. The undergrowth is fairly dense in places and it’s not easy to see that far into the forest from the road. For this reason tigers and other animals often walk the road and their tracks are seen frequently. During our drive yesterday we also saw gaur, mistakenly known as the Indian bison. There was a group of six of these massive animals grazing along the side of the road. I saw them in Jaldapara but this was a much better sighting.
 
On our second morning drive we had only been in the park for 5 minutes when we came upon a line of parked jeeps waving us down and pointing across a small stream. Across the stream about 20M away was a male tiger. Wow, I couldn't believe it, we were only in the park for 5 minutes and we're already seeing the main event! This tiger hung around for a few minutes and then even more amazingly was joined by a female tiger. Now my mind was really blown, two tigers at the same time! Holy Shit! The male disappeared soon after but the female actually lied down for everyone to see. Everything the tiger does is narrated in small whispers - ' she's looking at us', 'she's cleaning herself',  ' she's standing up' , ' she's walking'. There is nothing too small or trivial not to comment about. The tiger eventually got up and disappeared out of sight but this was after we all got to watch her for 10 minutes. There was a line of about 15 jeeps in the end but it was still quiet and a rewarding sighting.
 
The rest of the drive we had a few promising leads on tigers from alarm calls and tracks but we didn't have another sighting. We saw more of the usual suspects which are spotted deer, sambar deer, hanuman langurs, rhesus macaques and wild boars. There was always animals to see, spotted deers number about 22,000 in the park.  
Harry and Brigid are on a tight schedule and are going to visit Bandhavgarh national park before they have to go home. I was also going to visit the park but would have to go back to Jabalpur for the night and then take a train/bus combo to get to the park. Harry and Brigid were going to hire a private taxi to take them to the park to save time. I saw this as an opportunity to avoid travel back to Jabalpur and then travel to the park. It was more than I wanted to spend but it would save me 24 hours and travel hassles so I decided to share the car with them. We left after our morning safari in Kanha. The drive took 6 hours but I was listening to my ipod so I didn't have to talk at all. The road was a skinny one lane backroad that varied from smooth to rough, with the rough parts prevailing. There was hardly any traffic at all. The only traffic jams we encountered involved herds of cows and goats.
 
We arrived in Tala,the village at the gate of Bandhavgarh park, at 7.30. I took a $5 room at the Tiger Lodge. It was a large room with private bath and kind of rundown but it was the right price. We ate dinner, had a beer and after a hot bucket shower I went to bed because it would be another early morning start tomorrow.
 
 At 6.15am Harry, Brigid, our driver Kunwar and I are in line with about 20 other jeeps at the Khatia gate. We enter the park at 6.30 and drive on one of 5 prescribed routes. After we complete our route and check in at designated place in the park we are free to drive where we want. Unfortunately to finish our route faster our driver speeds through much of the park which I don't like at all. What if there is something to see on our way to the checkpoint? I tell him at the check point that he is driving too fast and he says now he will drive slower. We see some spotted deer and sambar deer before we check in.
Bandhavgarh was the private hunting grounds of Rewa maharajas. After years of uncontrolled poaching, Maharaja Martand Singh offered it special protection in the early 1960’s. The rugged terrain of the 448 sq. km park is dominated by a high plateau with sal forests and grassy sprawls. Bandhavgarh was the home of the white tiger but the last white tiger was seen in these forests in 1957.

 
We check in at am and then continue exploring the park when we come across a line of parked jeeps and working elephants, this can only mean one thing. There is a tiger hiding among bamboo clumps, found by a mahout, the driver of an elephant. The elephants are ferrying people to the tiger and back like a conveyer belt. It costs 15$ for the 10 minute ride to see the tiger and then back again. None of us in our jeep are interested in doing that, we will just wait on the road and see what happens. Although looking back now I should have done it, just for a nice close up photo of a tiger. After waiting 10 minutes there is some hectic activity... the tiger is on the move. He must have gotten annoyed with all these elephants coming up to him. He's on the move through tall brown grass but I get glimpses of him. Kunwar maneuvers our jeep further down the road in anticipation of the tigers path. He picked a great spot, although we can't see the tiger yet he is headed in our direction because we can see 2 elephants following him. He comes into sight on a patch of burnt grass as wide as a road. These firebreaks are all throughout the park and are meant to stop forest fires from spreading too much in the dry season.
 
The tiger is in plain sight on the burnt grass and walking right towards us. I get some good photos as he turns a little to his left and crosses the road about 2 jeeps in front of us. It’s amazing that he walks right through the parked jeeps among all the people watching him. I can’t take my eyes off of him as he crosses the road and goes up a hill on the other side and finally disappears into the bush with the 2 elephants still following him. It’s kind of sad to see all these jeeps and elephants bothering the tiger but I don't know how they can make it any better. Tigers are a big draw card and I can understand why all these people want a glimpse of this rare big cat. It’s just too bad that it’s circus like and very busy. I guess they could limit the number of vehicles allowed into the park each day like I would see later in another Indian park, but I’m sure this would cause other problems. A bunch of jeeps drive to another area in anticipation of the tiger going there, we follow suit but the tiger never appears. That’s ok with me. I had a great viewing of the tiger before he disappeared, so I’m very happy.
 
We drive up a hill to visit a large statue of Vishnu carved out of a single rock 1000 years ago. After we visit one of 39 man made caves in the park. We see more spotted deer, sambar deer, hanuman langurs and wild boar before leaving the park at 10.30. I eat breakfast alone at a restaurant just down from the tiger lodge. Tala village, like the village at the gate of Kanha is a small one road village with hotels,a few restaurants and shops all to do with tourism in the national parks.
 
Harry and Brigid are leaving tomorrow and they want to do an afternoon safari before they leave. I'm basically doing any safaris that they want to do to save money. We enter the park at 2.30. On our way to the park gate an Asiatic jackal crosses our path and continues towards some local houses. Apparently jackals are seen more often outside of the park and can be heard howling most nights from Tala village. He looked like one of the many stray dogs I've seen around India but much healthier with an attractive brown coat. He looked like a happy dog.
 
The afternoon drive is 3 hours and finishes at 5.30. Tigers sightings usually occur from around 4.15 to 5 according to the park guides. We don't see a tiger on this safari but we do see all of the usual suspects. We are lucky enough to see a pair of barking deer which number only about 150 in the park and are rarely seen. They don't flee at our presence and we get a good view of them for a few minutes. I've seen barking deer in Kaziranga national park in the northeast but this was a much better sighting. I've also seen and heard them in Borneo. Their call is suited to their name as it sounds like a scary dog barking. It can sound very mysterious and a little unnerving if you don't know what it is.
 
Back in Tala I walk the main road and check out the other budget hotels looking for people to share safaris. I'm not ready to leave yet, I''m hooked on seeing another tiger and the possibility to see some other rare animals in the park like the aggressive sloth bear or a leopard. I find 3 English travellers who are also interested in doing a safari tomorrow morning, so I will meet them at their hotel at am.
 
I eat dinner alone and finish eating just as Harry and Brigid are sitting down to eat. I leave after I'm done and go to the hotel of the English travellers to hang out with them. This was the last time I saw Harry and Brigid and was so happy to be free of Brigid. I decided not to speak my mind to her, though I really wanted to. I have a hard time pretending to like someone when I don't like but after the following incident, Brigid hardly spoke to me anyway.
It was our second morning safari in Kanha with Harry, Brigid and I in the front bench and 3 Swedish backpackers we met at Harry's hotel, sitting in the back. Twenty minutes after seeing the 2 tigers together we were continuing our safari through the park. Brigid pulls out her digital camera and starts showing the Swedes pictures of their lodge and business back in Alaska. Harry and her run a Kodiak bear safari lodge which, sure is interesting but there's a time and a place for show and tell and during safari in India is not one of them. I bit my tongue for 10 minutes but then couldn't handle it any longer. Brigid was sitting beside me and going on and on about her place and their clients and I had to say something. I told her we are on safari and it’s not the time to be showing your photos from home. She said we all paid for our safari which is true I said, but you are distracting them from the safari they paid for. She apologized to them and told me I was rude for saying that to her! She hardly talked to me again after that and that was really sweet. I don't think I was out of line for saying what I did and after telling other backpackers about them they joked with me when we were on safari saying “Hey, Dan, do you want to see pictures of my cat?”.  I don't care what anyone says, looking for animals during safari is not a time for show and tell. If she only realized how rude she was to her husband and her condescending tone to locals. She thought her shit didn't stink and I hate people like that. This is what I wanted to say to her but what’s the point just to get angry over the whole thing....she's not worth my time. It’s usually very rare that I meet other travellers that I really don't like.
  It seems like I usually end up hanging out with Australians and English backpackers. More often than not, it’s a couple too. I do hang out with Canadians and Americans often and sometimes Europeans - French, Swiss, German. But for some reason I cross paths with English and Australians the most. I usually travel alone and it’s usually me making the first contact when I meet someone, though not always. I think I’m more inclined to ask someone to hang out whose first language is also English. If I’m alone in a city and I hear a couple nearby speaking English, I’ll strike up a conversation with them. I really like the English and Australian accents and all their slang, which I sometimes adopt. I seem to have more in common with them too.

I met Nick, Tom and Kate, the English backpackers at their hotel at am and then we joined the line up of jeeps at the park gate. They arranged the jeep and driver with their hotel.We had a good safari seeing 6 different types of animal - spotted deer, sambar deer, wild boar, hanuman langurs, rhesus macaques and a jackal. It was a rewarding safari even though we didn't see a tiger. We saw lots of pug marks but no luck. I didn't care for our driver or our guide much though. They driver was from the Brits hotel and the guides are mandatory and accompany all jeeps in the park. Though both are private and not employed by the park so quality really varies between people who really care about the park and its animals and others who just want to get you in and out and collect their money. All morning safaris are 4 hours and end at 10.30, so I was confused and angry when the driver was at the park gate to leave at 9.45. We all agreed it was too early to be leaving so I stood up and demanded that we turn around and not leave the park until our promised time of 10.30. They tried to give excuses but we weren't having any of it so they turned around and we left the park at the proper time. Sure, we didn't see much else in the extra 45 minutes but it’s about that, it’s about the principal and getting what we were promised.
 
The Brits were hanging around for another day but didn't want to go on another safari afternoon. I didn't understand this, they came all this way only to do one safari? Bandhavgarh national park isn't on the way to anywhere and people make the effort to come here to go on more than one safari, I thought. Oh well, to each their own, but I was still interested in doing more safaris. Luckily for me 3 more backpackers arrived at their hotel and we went out for the afternoon safari.
  We entered the park at 2.30 and right away our driver sped to a place where a tiger was last seen on the morning safari. I hate speeding through the park at anytime but I must admit this time it paid off. After 10 minutes we came across 2 parked jeeps. They were watching a tiger through bamboo clumps lying down on a dried up sandy river bed. We tried to get a good view but the jeeps wouldn't move at all. I got a photo of the tiger through some foliage. He only rested for a few minutes after we arrived then got up and disappeared into the undergrowth. We followed the road to his anticipated destination and waited along with 8 other jeeps. We waited for 30 minutes and then drove to a waterhole and then came back and waited another 30 minutes. There was no guarantee of the tiger coming out here and the others had not seen much of the park so we all agreed to leave and explore more of the park. We saw more of the usual suspects but no tiger again.
 
We all ate a delicious and cheap dinner at my lodge. The lodge only cooks one meal -thali. Thali is common in India and has variations from north to south but basically it’s a variety of different food in small proportions, rice, curried vegetables, curried potatoes, curd ( we call it yogurt ), chapathi ( unleavened bread) and there’s always some food that I don’t know. It’s kind of an all you can eat thing with most places refilling you almost endlessly. I was always stuffed after eating thali. I was a little confused the first time I experienced thali. I was on a bus with all locals and we stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. It was quite chaotic and busy with young men running around with stainless steel plates, each with little sections so the different foods don’t mix. I sat down at an empty table and was joined by an Indian guy in his mid 20’s. I asked him what was going on and what I was supposed to do. Seeing that I was unsure of the protocol, an alert and English speaking worker of the restaurant helped me out. They filled all the sections with various food and then I had the option of choosing fish or pork as an add on. As I finished my rice and veggie sections, they were quickly refilled. I started to understand the system and thought it was a great idea. If I was ever undecided on what to eat after that or just felt lazy, I would order thali. While we were eating dinner, an Englishman/ Indian woman couple joined us. They were looking for foreigners to share a jeep with on the morning safari. The 6 of us agreed to meet at the Brits hotel the following morning.
 
My third morning of safari at Bandhavgarh began like the rest. 6 of us were in the jeep at the gate at 6.15am. For me going on safari is a very exciting activity because of the unpredictability of animals. Our morning drive consisted of seeing the usual suspects of the park but unfortunately no tiger and no significant events to mention. I had actually planned on leaving today but since there were 5 other people interested in going on another safari it would be cheap for me to go again so I decided to stay another day.

The 6 of us decided to go on the afternoon safari too. This would be my last safari in this park because my money was running low with nowhere to get more and plus, I felt satisfied in the number of safaris I had done. We searched in vain for the tiger but only saw more of the usual suspects. The safari got interesting around 4.45. There was a huge lineup of jeeps and 2 buses parked along a road. Obviously a tiger was in the area. Only 4 jeeps saw the tiger but the rest got into position to intercept the tiger in his anticipated course of direction. We waited but unfortunately the tiger wasn’t aware that he was suppose to make another appearance and no one saw him again. Oh well, no tiger on my last safari here but I still feel very lucky, thrilled, rewarded and immensely satisfied that I was able to see 5 tigers, not many people can say that.

My plan after leaving the tiger reserves of central India was to go south overland to Hampi. Hampi is a small laid back place dotted with ancient temples among a surreal landscape of giant boulders and was recommended to me by other travellers. Unfortunately Hampi was almost 1000 km away and there was nothing I wanted to visit along the way, so it looked like I had a few days of travel ahead of me.
 
The days of transit began on my final morning in Tala. I got up a 7.30am to eat breakfast and catch the 8.30 bus to Umaria where I would catch a train at 10 to Katni and so on. The bus to Umaria is one hour so I thought I had plenty of time to catch the train. Unfortunately for me the bus was 30 minutes late and I missed the train by literally 2 minutes. This was annoying since the next train wasn't till 4.30. Being late by a few minutes cost me 6.5 hours of waiting.
 
The driver of the autorickshaw that took me from the bus station to the train station was a really nice guy. He asked me and I told him that I missed my train and had 6 hours to kill. His English wasn't great but he told me to come with him, “ No money, no money.” he said. Now that’s a phrase I don't hear very often! He took me to a part of town to watch a small parade or festival like thing. It consisted of about 14 males of different ages all painted yellow with blacks stripes of the tiger and intricate images on their backs, the tail included. They danced down the street to the beat of drums and a flute. They stopped at a temple were they danced for 10 minutes. Each of them then took turns kneeling and kissing the feet of some important looking guy standing on the steps to the temple. I’m not sure what this meant but I’m guessing it was to show some sign of respect. It was very interesting and totally unexpected. I was the only white guy around. After this I jumped back into his autorickshaw and we went to his house. He just wanted to be friends and seemed very genuine. He told me his name but I'm so bad with remembering these Indian names. I much better with remembering animal facts. I left my large pack at his house with his sister and her kids. He exchanged his autorickshaw for his motorcycle and we were off again. I bought us a simple lunch of samosas, which are very tasty and cheap, around 25 cents. We went to a reservoir a few kilometers out of town.
It felt refreshing to be travelling on the back of a motto again. It may not be the safest way to travel in most of India due to the mad traffic and horrid roads but here the was hardly any traffic. We’re weren’t wearing helmets which is nothing new for me while travelling but out of all the countries I have visited, I have seen the highest number of people wearing helmets in India. I hired a lot of mottos for transport while travelling around Cambodia in 2003.
 
The reservoir was very peaceful with some locals hanging out and fishing. Next of this unofficial local tour was a temple in the middle of nowhere. I had a feeling I was one of very few foreigners who saw this part of India. Back at his house I relaxed until I had to catch my train. Now this guy wasn't totally innocent and a few times asked me for a gift but I had nothing I wanted to give him. I don't like people being nice to me just to get something in return, just leave me alone if that’s the case. This guy wasn't too demanding and didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth. He was overall very nice and accommodating for me.
  He dropped me at the train station and in 4 hours I was back in Jabalpur where I would spend the night. I had planned on leaving the following morning but decided to stay in Jabalpur for the day because I had been doing something everyday since I left Varanasi and just wanted a do nothing day. Jabalpur is just another noisy, polluted Indian city but I didn’t mind it. Most of the traffic was motorcycles instead of cars and this made it more tolerable. I didn’t see any other white faces around. I tried to book multiple train tickets for the long journey south and found out that the trains were booked for days. My best option and most convenient option was to fly from Nagpur. The next afternoon I took a really nice deluxe A/C bus to Nagpur. It was a smooth 6 hour journey. I arrived in Nagpur, went straight to the Hotel Bluemoon and ordered chicken curry and a beer from room service. It was late and I didn't feel like going out to search for food. I've been spoiled by room service and TV at many of the hotels though I only take advantage of room service when it’s late or I really don't feel like going out. It’s too bad my hotel in Varanasi didn't have room service while I was sick.