Ranthambore National Park

We left Jaipur early and drove all morning to our hotel near the Tiger Reserve at Ranthambore NP. This is not the hotel — it’s more of the countryside along the way:)

Along the way from Jaipur we stopped at a rest stop where some in our group dared to test the freshly made tea which these guys were brewing. I didn’t.

The hotel in a small town was lovely. Another case of the very rich and the very poor side by side. Our position as the “very rich” in this case has given us much to think about. All of us who went to India are having to give some more thought to what we could or even should be doing to make an impact for the gospel here.

After lunch we took a very hard (as in NO shocks in the flat bed truck) ride out to the reserve. Everyone else in the area was there for the same reason and the narrow road through little villages just wasn’t up to the traffic. But in India it seems, you don’t fix the problem you just deal with it. They are exceptionally patient people!

We went out to the reserve both in the afternoon and then again in the morning, each time to a different section as it was highly regulated as to the number of vehicles in each. We saw tigers on both trips! as well a lots of other wildlife. I’ll combine the trips here. The reserve is in what once was the royal hunting park, complete with palace and fortress and walls and hunting lodges. The scenery alone was beautiful but the animals made it even more interesting to me as I hadn’t expected this to be such a safari. I kept thinking I was in Africa and had to remind myself that I was in India and seeing a side of it that I hadn’t seen before.

I had a good laugh when I saw this sign on the second day because I had never, ever heard so much noise in a game park as the rangers themselves were making when we spotted the tiger on the first day!

The two types of deer which we saw in great numbers all over the park are the tigers’ main food. Those tigers certainly are well fed! And monkeys are everywhere, but hard to nail down for a photo.

Birds were abundant as well, both great numbers and many species. Peacocks were in the trees, on the walls and everywhere. I’m sorry I didn’t get the names of most of them but this first one is a stork.

At first I thought these were tent caterpillars but I was wrong, they are spider webs! I wanted so much to get out and look at them up close!

We watched this sloth bear for quite a while and the guide said he is ten times more elusive than the tigers since he is basically nocturnal so we felt privileged to get a good view of him.

I think this is the first mongoose I’ve seen in the wild so he was interesting. But the real stars of the show that we came to see were the tigers and both afternoon and morning we got to see some. We saw cubs at a distance hiding under a tree but the two adults that we got a good look at were both healthy and beautiful; regal, I’d say.

What a great experience we had here! I could have stayed for a week but alas, our time in India was up and we had to drive back to Jaipur to catch the planes to Mumbai (where the airport was so clean we couldn’t believe we were still in India) and then to Mauritius to meet the ship. We flew through the night and arrived in Mauritius very tired so I didn’t get any pictures as we took the long drive through the countryside to the hotel near the port. It was, however, a very modern, clean looking country, speaking French and English and very friendly. This one image of Mauritius is from our hotel window of the waterfront where Brenda and I walked for a while after we rested. Next morning we were up and out early and back home on the ship.