Corbett- Don't miss the forest,for the tiger

I have been to many tiger reserves and each trip has been fantastic. I have never seen a tiger. We go in winters, when the forest is lush green and tigers could be sitting a foot away and we wouldn’t see it among the shrubs. So we have a very good time looking at migratory and resident birds, animals and trees.

This time we spend 6 days in Ramnagar, the town near the national park. We chose a place right on River Kosi. The cool thing about a river bank, at the foothills of Himalayas, is the large number of water and mountain birds that you get to see. Lots of birders go uphill and click spectacular photos of mountain birds. And others go to river banks to see spectacular herons, storks, ducks and other water birds. At the river bank on foothills, as you may have guessed, you see both kinds. So it’s such a good idea to do this.

We stayed at a place which had one complete side open to the river and a magnificent hill. So if a tiger or leopard wanted to come and have a drink at the river, and then pop into our resort, s/he could. But that only happens in summers, unfortunately, so we were happy with just seeing occasional pugmarks on our walks along the river.

The thing to do when sitting at the river, is stare open-mouthed, as kingfishers, storks and others, dive in and come up with fish. The most mind-blowing aqua acrobatics that I saw this time, was that by a crested kingfisher. It hovers like a helicopter mid-air and then swoops into the river. Most of the onlookers almost, (I positively did) clapped. We spent hours just doing this, while breathing in the sparkling air and looking at the mist rolling over the river.

Inside the forest, we went crazy because we saw Eurasian wrynecks right at the gate. These birds mostly stay and breed in Kashmir, so it was such a delight to see them here. And then we saw pied hornbills which were the prettier cousin of the grey hornbill which sits on my tree in Delhi every day. And while I am not a fan of vultures (of course they are a very important part of the ecosystem etc), the Himalayan Griffin is one of the most majestic birds that I have ever seen. We saw many kinds of deer including the barking deer, which is the smallest deer in India.

Because of our excited squawking at the entry gate, at spotting a ‘bird’ (what??), the driver searched high and low and got us ‘”the best naturalist”, instead of the usual guide. Difference – the ‘usual guide’ rushes from one pugmark to another, one ‘call’ to the next, with a single-minded focus on Tiger. ‘Naturalist’ stops to show you trees, tells you about how to determine the health of a forest through a termite hill and other exciting features of a forest.  Between naturalist, driver bhaiyya and us, there was enough excitement to make all the birds and deer come out of their slumber and start parading in front of us. And they did.

So every time a jeep passed by, asking “did you see anything”, we started reciting the long list excitedly. But the jeep drivers just gave us confused looks. They meant to ask “did you see a tiger”?? “Oh that. Naaa. But we saw an incredibly beautiful forest”!!