There is an incredible and inexplicable difference between the experience of watching remarkable images of a tiger in magazines or on a television screen, compared to the real event of encountering the Big Cat of the Jungle in his own territory. It’s stating the obvious but the fact did not occur to me until I realised one very basic difference: while you gaze at the image held in your hand as you please, the ‘real’ tiger gazes at you as he pleases! Even though I venture into tiger territory quite often, I only realised this when the tiger himself gazed at me!

Close encounter
A special ‘once in a blue moon’ family holiday took me to Corbett. I was woken up before dawn with a steaming cup of coffee in bed to perk me up for the much touted elephant safari that I had booked the previous night. The driver of our vehicle stopped at the riverbank, and while I was waiting for a bridge to appear, he began to change the gear to 4-wheel drive and placed a heavy stone on the accelerator—just in case his foot slipped in the water. Before I realised it, we were tyre-deep in the river and the water gushed into the safari vehicle! The adventure had only begun.

Later, as we dawdled through the high grassland with our wise mahout, Manglu, perched atop Lakshmi, our 35-yearold female elephant, we unintentionally gave the tiger a wake up call as he lay camouflaged in the golden brown grass. The big cat caught my wife and me by surprise. Manglu whispered, “Saar, tiger” and we squinted at the shuffling bush. As soon as we caught a glimpse of the big head bobbing out of the dry grass, I zoomed my camera to arrest the best tiger shot of my life. Manglu confirmed it was a male. Male tigers have a larger head than females and they don’t hunt for their kids. Some of the males have a particular black pattern on their forehead—like a Chinese inscription or a symbol.

Manglu knew the four-year-old beast, as he had spotted him a few times earlier. Being territorial, this one had been marking the 10-odd sq km territory for a few months. As he walked out from the tall grass, we could see he was almost nine feet long. Manglu mentioned that he was aggressive and had actually chased a vehicle last month. I knew the story was true since a friend of mine happened to be on that vehicle. The tiger fixed his gaze on us while I peered through the viewfinder of my camera, as we balanced ourselves and shuffled quietly reinforcing our grip over Lakshmi.

Fear multiplied
Within those moments of fleeting excitement and fear, I felt like an unwanted visitor and became conscious of the fact that I was intruding on someone’s home. Neither did I have any strength to defend nor the power to escape, if I was confronted! The only reassurance was the tiger’s fear of Lakshmi’s strength. She seemed unruffled, until the tiger turned around, began observing her movement and eventually initiated steps, one at a time towards us, reclaiming his own territory. Bloody images of hunting scenes from Moghul miniature paintings, ran through my head as I watched the tiger, now barely a few yards away, almost ready to leap towards Lakshmi.

Unaware of Manglu’s experience, my wife began whispering that we should immediately turn around and rush back but Manglu cautioned us. He said that we could not move with our backs towards the tiger, even for a moment and Lakshmi well understood the conversation as she began to take onestep back at a time, continuously facing the tiger.

Rejuvenating in the wild
Manglu asked us to get a good grip on the elephant seat and remain calm. As Lakshmi retracted, the tiger reclaimed, pushing us out of the grassland, where we finally sighed a breath of relief. Although we were still within a two-leap reach, he lost his interest in us. He seemed keen on marking his territory by urinating on a bush or two and began striding towards the river. I had heard that tigers were great swimmers but never imagined that I would actually ever see one in action. He turned around to give us another look and began swimming across. On reaching the other bank he gave us one lasting stare and disappeared into the forest.

The park spreads over 1300 sq km and any visitor on a day trip can easily spot more than a few of kinds of deer—most common being the chital (spotted deer) or the sambar. Wild Asian elephants and tuskers, porcupines, wild boar, mongoose and Asiatic jackal can be spotted on a single drive if you have a sharp eye. There is also a great variety of aquatic life in the Ram Ganga and Kosi Rivers that cut across the park. Apart from a variety of Mahaseer, there are goonj (cat fish), Indian trout and otters. If you scout further into the park towards the Dhikala area of the park you may get a glimpse of the ghariyal (Gavialis Gangeticus).

I needed my share of time to dip into the cool river and inhale some pure and fresh air far from the polluted, noisy and crowded Delhi. So I filled my infinitely long days of an immoderately short weekend by lazing around on a hammock with sun tan and oil rubbed on. Especially after the tiger had disappeared into the woods, the people at the camp made me believe that I was the King of the Jungle, at least as long as I remained within the solar-powered fencing!