Day 12 is a LONG travel day with a new driver who does not speak English as well as our dear Yogi, and this might be a good thing for reasons that I won't go into at this point. They told us the roads were tough with rough terrain. Gene and I felt right at home after living with backwoods West Virginia roads. It's still a relief to be out of the crowded and extremely polluted cities.
The accommodations at Banjaar Tola are basically "tents" REALLY elegant tents. We were warned to be escorted to and from our "tents" after dark and before sunrise. Later, the guide informed us that there was a tiger sighting near one of the tents a few days ago. Well, we DID want to see a tiger, just really don't want to be the tiger's dinner. We arrived late in the afternoon so were able to relax a little before our dinner of mixed Indian and western foods.
Speaking of food, it was all very delicious. Indians take great pride in their unique cuisine. We were served by beautiful young men wearing turbans and bearing gifts of exotic Indian dishes. We were served individually from each wonderful dish. There are so many people in India that one gets the feeling that they really use too many folks for the job at hand. We saw this throughout our travels. Also, the folks who work for the public are beautiful, lighter skinned. We discovered that lighter skin is valued over darker colored skin. I've heard this said of the African Americans who live in America, too, although I don't know if this is fact.
The following photos were taken on the road to Kanha-Banjaartola and represent the most remote areas of India that we saw on the entire trip.
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| The dwellings were very simple and blended into the countryside |
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| Women carry water from the river to their homes |
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| The men tend the small vendors on the side of the road in the villages |
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| Much of the farm work is done with ox drawn cultivators. See the modern electric towers in the background. |
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| a more pristine river that what can be seen in the cities |
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| Transporting the hay |
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| women laborers |
We finally arrived at our "tent" camp and were greeted by the entire staff with cool fruit drinks and cool towels for our hands and faces. Below are photos of our tent and deck.
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| View from the deck of our tent camp. The river made a peaceful, babbling sound through the night. |
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| The king sized bed |
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| View of our deck |
The day culminated with dancing and dinner in the bush! Food was excellent, a barbecue. It was very dark and rather hard to tell what we were eating, but it's a sure bet it wasn't beef!
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| Me doing my happy to be in India dance! |
Day 13: Depart for morning game drive at 6:15
Breakfast of tea/ coffee/ cookies/ and
porridge with whiskey was served at 5:45. I rather liked the porridge with whiskey! Then we set off with our guide, the only female guide in the whole park, and quite a good one at that!
Our female guide soon picked up another guide (male) and we were off on our quest to find the Bengal tiger, King of the forest, and capricious star of the woods. We soon learned that "tiger" spotting is much more about clues than actually driving around looking for the random stripes among the trees and vines. NO, tiger hunting is a fine art of spotting paw prints in the sand and listening for any sign of panic from the monkeys, birds, and deer. Our guide was a master at this. We believed that she must be extremely talented to be the only female among this male dominated milieu.
Below are several pictures from the 4 game drives that we took in this park. It is noteworthy that we never got a glimpse of the elusive tiger, only paw prints.
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| Tiger paw prints! Alas, no tiger, although several of our group did see him. |
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| Birds of a feather do not necessarily flock together |
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| sunset |
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| peacock |
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| Ubiquitous silver plumed cockscomb |
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| gorgeous parrot |
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