Days 11 and 12 Mahua Kothi Game drives

Day 11 our first game drive:  

We left this morning for the game park around 6:15 and armed with a picnic lunch!  We were given hot water bottles and warm blankets because the early morning was brisk and breezy with the open jeeps.  I thought the drive was exhilarating and a respite after the crowding of the cities and highways.  The road leading to the park gave us an inside perspective on the working lives of the Indian villagers (many of whom were tribesmen displaced by the park itself).

The women tend the hogs.

A house, clothesline, and homemade woven fence.

The platform is where a villager sleeps with his crops and livestock to keep the tigers away!

The pictures below are self explanatory.  Although I wrote down the names of birds and animals that we saw, it's hard to match the name with the critter at this point.

Elephants are not indigenous to this area of India, but they are used in this park to help track the tiger!

The sun is setting and the owl is awaking!

After a day of tracking the elusive tiger (with no results), we were welcomed by a spicy scented bath complete with candles!

One more night in the beautiful Mahua Kothi dwellings, and I am really going to miss this place.  I think most of us enjoyed the game drive immensely, but we would have relished a day to be pampered in the beautiful lodge.

Sidebar:  When we stopped for our picnic lunch, we were immediately surrounded by a pack of feral/ starving dogs.  This was a most pitiful sight, heart breaking really.  I wanted to feed all of them and take them to a vet for worming and delousing.  (Why don't they delouse the dogs the way they do the people on the airplane?)  In fact, I got fussed at by the guide for sneaking a cookie to one of the female dogs who appeared to be nursing a brood.  So sad...so not like America.