Extraordinary! Everywhere we look is a perfect picture. I have no clue how I’m going to edit down the massive number of photos we’ve taken. I have no idea how I would have done this with a film camera.
The highlight of the last few days, and for me the high point of the trip, was a visit to the Ranthambore Nature Park. Of course the main goal was to see a tiger, but the park has a large number of other indigenous animals. We saw sambar deer, spotted deer, macaque monkeys, mongoose, tree pies, green parrots to name just a few. It wasn’t until the second of two trips through the park, bouncing furiously on the two-track trail, when the spotter indicated that we should all be quiet. He then after a few tense seconds, pointed into the woods and uttered the word I had been hoping to hear… TIGER!
We lingered for almost an hour as she rolled around under the shade, played in a small pond, and then trotted off. It was amazing!
I’ve uploaded a few new pics to the Flickr photostream. As always, you can see them on the left, just click on them to see bigger versions.
There is PLENTY of other stuff to share, but connection time is precious. More later…
Update [2008-dec-14]: I’ve added links in the original post that lead to related pics in my Flickr India trip photo set. The entire set (319 shots) can be viewed as a slide show here.
Ranthambore is best known for its great tiger populace. As tourism in the park increased, so did the inhabitants of neighboring villages. This led to increasing amounts of deadly human-tiger relatives and poaching. The Indian Government started Project Tiger in 1973 with a chosen area of 60 mi2. It was later expanded to become what is now called, the Ranthambore National Park. Besides tigers, the reserve has thriving bird inhabitants with more than 270 different species of birds here.
Ranthambore National Park