JoGW Day2: Tiger, Tiger

by Meethil on September 27, 2009


Joy of Giv­ing Week, 2009

Almost every­one I know has thrilling sto­ries to tell about their first encounter with a tiger. Either they were on foot, or it was late at night, or they were alone in the forest…there are as many true stores as there are truths. Unfor­tu­nately I do not have such a thrilling encounter to exchange with them.

The first time I saw a tiger in the wild was in Jim Cor­bett National Park. It was my first visit to the national park and I was on my way to the guest house in the Dhikala range.  About ninety min­utes into the drive I saw a black tail dash across the road. That’s it. That’s my first tiger expe­ri­ence. At 11.10 am, in the broad day­light of a win­ter morn­ing I saw a tiger tail jump the road. How did I know it was a tiger? Well, you see, when tigers are sur­prised and need to make a dash – they don’t make a dash, they ditch. So this female did not run off into the for­est, she hid in the thicket besides the road no more than 20 feet from us. We could not see her at that time, but we knew she was near by. We waited for 55 min­utes, before she slowly and slyly came out form her hid­ing place; took a good long look at us and walked away into the for­est. Vis­i­bly upset at being forced  to hide.

After that I did not see any tigers for the rest of my visit.

For Your Sec­ond Book
Tell me in your own words, whats so fas­ci­nat­ing about tigers? Why do peo­ple go through so much trou­ble to see them? And to what extent would you go to have your own mem­o­rable encounter? Use the com­ments sys­tem below to share your views in about 100–150 words.
Series Nav­i­ga­tion«JoGW Day1: My first national parkJoGW Day3: Respon­si­ble Tourism»

{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

Zubin Kabraji September 27, 2009 at 6:47 pm

Tigers are amaz­ing crea­tures. While being a lead­ing preda­tor of the ani­mal king­dom, one must also under­stand that like every other crea­ture, ani­mal or human, they have a way of life and what really amazes me is when young adult tigers play together — they some­how are no dif­fer­ent from the small domes­tic cats at home.

I remem­ber a month ago tak­ing a drive in Borvli National Park to see the lions and white tigers. The ani­mals were well fed, well kept and well looked after. While the tigers were in large and spa­cious cages — lit­er­ally large net­ted com­pounds, the lions had an entire sec­tion to them­selves. The white tigers were beau­ti­ful ani­mals — we saw three of them — one who was curi­ous enough to come towards to sight­see­ing bus and two other young­sters who were not so curi­ous but indulged in some hec­tic play to amuse and amaze us. The lion we saw casu­ally strolled by the bus and gave us much cause for excite­ment with his roaring.

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Meethil October 6, 2009 at 4:19 pm

Dear Zubin,

Thank you for writ­ing in. I was hop­ing to read more of you, but i guess you you were caught up with work and did not find the time. Maybe next time.

I am very happy to hear you took the ride in SGNP. I have been there in my child­hood, and then again a cou­ple of years ago with a friend who is a vet. On my last visit, i saw the White tigers in their cage — this is dif­fer­ent from the enclosed perime­ter which you saw them in — I guess they have access to the larger enclo­sure dur­ing the time of the ride or some­thing like that.

See­ing ani­mals in cages gen­er­ally upsets me. I feel cages do not com­pli­ment the nature of ani­mals. In the sense — they destroy their beauty, their behav­iour and their spirit.

White tigers are basi­cally a colour vari­ant of the Ben­gal tiger and are rarely found in the wild. All white tigers, in cap­tiv­ity, in the world today are the descen­dants of one white tiger, Mohan caught by the Maharaja of Rewa in the year 1951. A White Tiger is the same as a Royal Ben­gal Tiger except for a genetic muta­tion that causes the change in the colour of their fur and eyes. White tigers have blue eyes and dark-brownish stripes.

You can read some inter­est­ing stuff on white tigers at this Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_tiger

Thanks for par­tic­i­pat­ing, i really appre­ci­ate it. If you would like to give me your feed­back or sub­scribe to updates please use the con­tact page of this web­site. Any sug­ges­tion would be a great help.

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wasim maner September 27, 2009 at 7:14 pm

i have encoun­tered tigers sev­eral times–as you men­tioned mostly on foot and some time on safari. to be hon­est i did not enjoy the thrilling moments though i used to crave for them to make inter­est­ing sto­ries to tell peo­ple. but i could never find those encoun­ters enjoyable-one i am scared with pres­ence of a tiger and sec­ond every time i chase him by his pug marks and alarm calls i have a guilt feel­ing of invad­ing his pri­vacy. my most scary expe­ri­ence with a tiger is when we traced a tigress with three cub sit­ting on a small nulla bund on a quiet after­noon in Tadoba, the noon was so quet that it seemed it was alarm­ing us not to enter the pri­vate ter­ri­tory. i felt ter­ri­bly guilty that day for trac­ing the female to that extend. look­ing back today, given a choice i wouldn’t want to go and do such searches to see a tiger. its healthy and peace­ful exis­tence in nature is far more impor­tant for me than my one ‘mem­o­rable’ encounter. rather i would embrace a dream –a tiger is laz­ing on a rocky shady water­hole with tummy full of meat and a Cara­cas of spot­ted dear is lay­ing by… an Alexan­drian para­keet gives a call tiger just turns its one ear and goes to deeper sleep and of course this all is hap­pen­ing on a sunny afternoon.

Reply

Meethil October 6, 2009 at 5:05 pm

Hi Wasim,

Thanks for shar­ing your expe­ri­ence. You raise two very valid issues. 1) Fear­ing the tiger and 2) Invad­ing its privacy.

I think its impor­tant for peo­ple to have some fear of wild ani­mals, with fear comes respect. Respect is impor­tant when we think of the wel­fare of wild ani­mals. If we respect some­one then we take care of that one. This in turn also takes care of the inva­sion of pri­vacy. We should know where to draw the line. When we respect wild ani­mals we are more con­scious of their com­fort and there­fore will not be so inva­sive just to have a good tiger experience.

Thanks for shar­ing your thoughts.

Reply

Raghunandan Jagdish September 27, 2009 at 10:55 pm

Hey Meethil
amaz­ing blog. Good work on it.

My first time look­ing at a tiger was in the Hyder­abad Zoo. I was there when i was in the 6th stan­dard. I was strolling along the cage and was look­ing for him. And then there he strolls him. He was imper­vi­ous to all the awe stares and the gasps of won­der­struck spec­ta­tors. Since then I have been faci­nated by tigers

But the pro­cras­ti­na­tor has been at work and has not gone to ban­dar­garh or such a sanc­tu­ary where where i can see this mag­ni­fi­cient beast in all his glory.

I take vic­arous plea­sure in the gal­lary of meethil where he has shot a lot of tigers (with a cam­era thank god) and i have them on my desktop!

Raghu

Reply

Meethil October 6, 2009 at 6:16 pm

Hi Raghu,

Thank you for writ­ing in.

I am glad that you still remem­ber your first tiger expe­ri­ence, in spite of it being in a zoo. I guess, tigers have that kind of an effect on us. But it has been a long time since your last sight­ing and i insist you visit a national park and try your luck at see­ing one in the wild. They do look dif­fer­ent from the ones in captivity.

You have won a book. It will be reach­ing you soon. I am sure it will add to you col­lec­tion. Enjoy your book.

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junglebook September 28, 2009 at 7:42 pm

Thank you all, for par­tic­i­pat­ing on the sec­ond day!
I will announce the win­ner tomor­row.
Please con­tinue to par­tic­i­pate, you still stand a chance of win­ning your book!
Spread­ing the word will make you eli­gi­ble for the bonus prize at the end of the week!

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junglebook September 29, 2009 at 7:44 am

Raghu­nan­dan Jagdish has won him­self a book!
Con­grat­u­la­tions. A book will be shipped to you at the end of the week.
The give away is still going! Com­ment on todays post and you stand a chance to win a book.

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