That’s Neat, That’s Neat, That’s Neat, That’s Neat…..I Really Love Your Tiger Feet” (title in homage to The Poet of Portsoy)

 

I’m going back a few days to our special visit to the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve that served as a brief but memorable interlude between our first host city of Nagpur and our second in Amravati.

We didn’t see a tiger but we saw a thicket where one was hiding (!) and we did see this paw print in the dust on the side of the road that required this 70s-pop song inspired blog title. We wanted to see a tiger, but that’s OK. Tigers and people really need their own spaces, so any contact is, at some level, problematic for their long-term survival. And it simply reinforces the need to visit again this remarkable jungle landscape that inspired Kipling’s (and Disney’s) “Jungle Book”.

We were enormously privileged to the guests of Harsch and Poonam Dhanwatey who hosted us at their private lodge on the edge of the Reserve. They founded the Tiger Research and Conservation Trust (tractindia.org) in 2001 and are national and international leaders in the challenging struggle to balance the needs of people and the needs of tigers.

We took a guided walk as night fell that took us to a high point overlooking the contested landscape that was once solid forest and that is now increasingly agricultural fields. Here is Harsh, who clearly is passionate about the land and wildlife he is preserving and some other snaps of the team.

Before dawn the following morning, we jumped into open-top jeeps and entered the Reserve. We saw some wonderful wildlife: a crocodiles, lots of deer, monkeys, and many different types of birds. Tigers are pretty elusive and, with plenty of water in the Reserve at the moment, the wildlife is pretty scattered rather than concentrated around a few waterholes.

Spot the Croc

Tiger Snack

We have had hardly any time away from Rotary-related work since we arrived in India, so our 36 hours with Harsh, his excellent crew, and GSE Coordinator Sanjay Arora, was a special time that we will remember for the rest of our lives. We are sure to follow the progress in protecting tigers and their habitat with great interest and we thank Harsch and Poonam very much and look forward to seeing them again (and a tiger in their natural habitat for the first time).