15th April - Ranthambore to Gangapur

Up at 4.15 to throw on clothes and bike down to the safari ticket office. There were a large number of Indians trying to get places for other tourists using their passports. We queued for ages. The good thing about having 2 people though was that I could go off and get us chai and breakfast while Alan waited - so at least we where not hungry as well as sleepy and flustered. We had an issue with the fact that there are only 2 off us and the jeeps take 6 but eventually managed to get on to a jeep with 4 other people.

The guide book that Alan has been using was not very explicit regarding the different choices for safari. Basically the only jeeps and trucks that are allowed into the park are government organsied ones. Therefore, when the hotels and the businesses around the town advertise safaris what they are actually offering to do is go to the government office at 4-5 in the morning with a copy of the tourist's passport, get tickets for them from the office and arrange a pick up at the tourist's hotel about 6am. This means that you get 1-2 hours extra sleep and do not have to queue to fight for tickets at ridiculous o'clock. The fee for the park (jeep) if you get the tickets yourself at 5am is 900RS (about £13) but to get it through a company is 1200RS. In hindsight I would have paid the extra :-)

The jeep that we had tickets for had to go and pick up some other people at a hotel 30 mins away and so we were the last people standing waiting at 6.30 - when all the other vehicles had left. It was frustrating as the best time to see Tigers is at dawn. The longer we were waiting the less chance there was of us seeing a Tiger. We eventually got to the park at 7ish. We had good seats at the back of the jeep.

We drove round for about 2 hours with everyone looking out for Tigers. We passed many other jeeps and non of them had seen a Tiger either and so I felt a bit better about the late start. We saw a few different types of deer and 1 type of monkey but not much else. The jungle here is very different to Tamil Nadu. It is really dry this time of year (the park shuts for 3 months during the monsoon as non of the jeeps can get through on the tracks). We were fortunate that the trees with beautiful red flowers that blossom for only 15 days per year were in full bloom. It was a stark contrast to the browns of the rest of the forest.

There was also load of Kingfishers and other birds.

At around 9 we passed another jeep which said that they had seen a Tiger in the distance on top of a rock. Our driver was awesome and told us all to hold on and went like the clappers through the jungle. After about 10 minutes of very fast driving we turned a corner to see a Tiger plod down onto the road in front of us! I was amazing :-)


Tigers have soft feet and therefore prefer to walk on the tracks in preference to the forest floor. It meant that we could follow it for 15 mins as it walked along in front of us and then we passed it and watched as it walked towards us. We had about 10 mins of watching it alone before one other jeep managed to find the Tiger as well. She was very graceful and did not seem to be that bothered by our presence. The rangers have started to feed the Tigers to bring them out in the day time. In the past there had been a lot of poaching and the Tigers had stopped coming out in the day. That has changed a lot over the last few years. The likelihood of seeing a Tiger is higher in this national park than anywhere else.

This was one of the best experiences I have had in India! Me an Alan were sooooo excited and happy. I could not believe that we could just watch her for 20 mins (I checked the time stamps on the photos). The only thing that stopped it was that the park closes between 10 and 2 and so the driver had to rush to get us back before it closed. It was great that there was loads of room in our jeep and we had an un-interrupted view. I took loads of photos and videos. After this experience we were totally un-bothered about what happened during the rest of the day and slightly un-interested in biking.

We got back to our hotel about 10.30 and went for a nap for 1 hour before packing up and riding into town for a really tasty lunch. The food in Rajesthan so far has not been great but this meal was really good. We were still tried and on go slow and so did not get on the road till 2. We only had 80km to do though.

We had thought that the highway would be similar all the way to Gangapur to the way that it started as we left the National Park. In fact we had very different types of roads. There were some areas which were very flat and had wheat fields for miles and it was very pretty. Other areas where just covered in desert. There were hundreds of trucks which had gone to the areas of sand and just had the drivers filling their trucks with sand in order to transport to else where.

I love the fact that in India old men will just squat on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and just and a natter and a smoke and children will walk for miles from their villages to climb a tree.... Biking really is the best way to see a country :-)

This is a picture of Alan kissing the Tarmac after we had been riding on a dirty road track for about 10km. It really slowed us down and was very hard work. The main problem with off road riding is the hammering it gives the bikes - especially with all of the weight we are carrying. I am currently using an Indian 35RS pedal after my Shimano SPD pedal broke in 2. It creaks like hell and wobbles.

There really are different pockets of friendliness in Rajasthan. For about half of the journey today we were welcomed and people were friendly but then coming into Gangapur town this evening several groups of guys tried to grope me as I biked past when Alan was riding ahead by about 1km (I should add that this is a rare occurance - I had got stuck behind a huge grain lorry). It is the worst configuration as people are alerted to the fact that cyclists are coming through but never have enough time to respond to the first person. It is the second person that then gets all the attention.

When I told Alan he suggested that we stick together and I bike in front. We still kept our sense of humor though.... Alan found it very funny to shout "Free Grope" as we were passing guys When I suggested he might as well at least get some money for me he started shouting "10RS per Grope" instead. Nice!

When we arrived in town we spent about 30mins looking at the 3 lodges for a room. They were all really grotty. The Dara Masala was cheap at 150RS for the room but was extremely basic and really not clean. The better looking place round the corner was also not clean and they wanted 500RS. We ended up going for the best of a bad bunch for 300RS (the reception guy had originally tried it on asking for 1000RS - I actually laughed out loud). Even then the room was very grotty. The whole town sank and the people were very unfriendly. While we were waiting for the guy to fix the water supply in the room before we could shower we went out an just got some street food.

It was a good job that we were on such a high after this morning as we did not really care that we were in a real shitty town in the evening and that the biking this afternoon had not been great. I felt violated just entering the bathroom in our hotel room - even though it was the best of a very bad bunch!

I stayed in the room while Alan went out for a wander and diner and faffed on my blog and wallowed in the greatness of my photography skills - what a fab Tiger!