Tadoba National Park (Maharashtra) | The evening air, laden thick with anticipation, was punctured by what sounded like a bark. To our untrained ears, it was just another jungle sound.
But to our guide Santosh, perched in the front seat of our open top Gypsy, it was a signal he had been waiting to hear all afternoon. "Shhhhh, it is here! I tell you 100 per cent, the tiger is nearby now," said Santosh, his voice calm and confident.
We had been crisscrossing the jungle for the last two hours in the Gypsy, each stop ending in disappointment. No tiger spotted. With the sun going down we made a final stop at a waterhole where a few other Gypsies crammed with hopeful tourists had already parked. We eased into in a clearing facing the pond, expecting the tiger to appear from a raised embankment on the opposite side.
And that's when Santosh heard the bark of the spotted deer -- the sound the animal makes to warn other herds when they sense a tiger nearby. The bark rang out again, but from a different direction.
"Jaldi, jaldi ghuma (Quick, quick, turn around)!" Santosh motioned to our driver Atul, telling him to reverse and head back to a fork in the road we had passed earlier. The race was on to be the first out before other Gypsies made it there. Atul was adept. So were other drivers. Without any aggression of city roads, the five Gypsies reversed, turned and parked at the dirt track fork surrounded by walls of tall grass, trees and shrubs. And we waited, cameras ready. Not for long.
From the foliage emerged a magnificent cub, her gait assured and unperturbed by the humans lying in wait to shoot it -- with long lenses. Behind, followed her sister. Both walked together, their large furry striped heads occasionally muzzling in playful sisterhood.
It was the moment all safari-goers that day had waited for all afternoon. To witness the majesty of an animal as regal as a tiger is indescribable. To see it from so close that you could discern every strand of its hair was a goose-bump raising experience.
Seconds passed and the cubs -- at about two or three years of age a tiger cub is the length of a pony -- approached the gathered Gypsys. A hushed silence filled the warm jungle air. The only sound was the staccato of DSLR camera shutters clicking rapidly.
Santosh told us that the tigers of Tadoba are so used to seeing safaris that they think of humans and their vehicles as part of the jungle furniture.
But he did give us a tip: "If the tiger looks at you, make eye contact, keep your gaze steady and don't crouch. That way it will know you are not a prey."
He said the two cubs were born to Chhoti Madhu, one of the many named tigers of Tadoba. The cubs do not get names until adulthood. Chhoti Madhu has a third cub, a male. We didn't see him. But we did catch a glimpse of Chhoti Madhu a few hundred metres away. She remained hidden while her girls played with each other in front of the Gypsies before making their way to the water-hole to sate their thirst.
The forest officer of the area, Santosh Thipe (not the same Santosh as the guide), later told us that the other tigers that roam the area are Shambu, Vaiman, Chhota Dadiyal (so named because of his luxurious cheek hair), W (because of a W pattern on the forehead) and Collar Wali (fitted with a tracking collar by the forest authorities).
"Of all the animals in the jungle, the tiger is the most regal. Its demeanour is of a king's. It is aloof, dignified and above all," said Thipe.
He pointed out that a tiger will never attack anyone unless it is hungry.
"Unlike humans, wild animals are not greedy. They kill only when they want to eat," said Thipe, who is a native of the neighbouring Chandrapur, the district headquarters.
Tadoba is one of 58 tiger reserves in the country, and arguably the most popular because of its relatively easy tiger spotting. It is a three and a half hour drive from Nagpur, and has several lodging options around national park in the buffer zone.
Safari times are limited to four hours in the morning and four in the afternoon, with tourists required to leave the core area by 6 pm in winters, a deadline enforced very strictly. Tadoba gives tourists the option to enter from 23 safari gates.
No mobile phones are allowed in Tadoba and many other national parks following a Supreme Court directive last year.
The national park is home to about 90 tigers, with neighbouring areas which make up the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve accounting for another 100 tigers. Just a decade ago there were only 30 in the area.
The Andhari river forms the lifeline of the abundant wildlife in the reserve, comprising spotted deer, sambar deer, sloth bear, Indian gaur, wild dogs, leopards, crocodiles, storks, egrets, owls, spiders and many more.
A safari is a great opportunity to learn about the other life forms that we share our planet with, and to pick up interesting vignettes about the national animal. For example, jungle cats use tree trunks, bushes and boulders to urinate and scent-mark their territories.
Every tiger has a unique pattern of stripes, and is best identified by the stripes on its flanks drawn by nature in perfect symmetry. As the English poet William Blake noted:
"Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"
