His majesty's grace, a moment to witness

Area: Bijrani, Overnight stay

Naturalist: Majid Hussain

Date: November 2010

We received some exciting news from Corbett Tiger Reserve’s Bijrani zone earlier in the month and a fantastic photograph to accompany it! Majid Hussain, our naturalist and assistant manager, hosted the retreat’s guests at an overnight stay in Bijrani’s forest bungalow. Unique to Corbett, forest lodges for tourist stays are available across the park’s tourism zones. These however need advance booking and organization, which Jim’s Jungle Retreat arranges for its guests for a thorough forest-entrenched jungle experience.

Day ONE of their stay, at around 6:30 AM on a late November morning, the guests and Majid set out on the road to Malani for their morning safari. Roughly 2kms from the bungalow they had spent the night in, the naturalist accompanying them, Basant, noticed fresh pugmarks of a “smallish male tiger” traversing the forest road for a good 100 meters before suddenly disappearing into the bush.

I reprise here what Majid tells me: “Basant was of the opinion that the tiger had only recently moved into the bush and was sitting somewhere in the grassland close to the track. We waited for at least an hour for any movement within the bush. The jungle seemed silent for a while as we waited.

Grace on the Malani Road, by Majid Hussain

Our patience was immense since our knowledge of the tiger’s whereabouts contained fresh inputs from the forest rangers and guards, who had informed us the night before of two in-oestrus females in the area – meaning they were ready to mate, and were heard these last few days calling out to other tigers. We were very certain that the grassland to our left contained at least one of the females as the mating calls the night before had been loud and continuous!”

All the more reason to wait where we were. Suddenly a sambar stag set off a loud alarm call on the Jar Pahar road, further up from us, near waterhole number 4. We stealthily crept up in our jeep to see what the sambar was alerted by. We got there just in time to see a beautiful female cross the road, and into the bush. We waited there, hoping she might step out on the road again, when another alarm call sent us reeling back toward the destination we had just come from, certain that the male we had been tracking was also on the move.

As we pushed back towards our original point, the moment was rewarded with a large male tiger moving out of the bush to occupy the track in front of us. Majestic, this tiger was not shy as he walked the length of the road, comfortable with the fact that we were following in our jeep.

He walked for a good 300 meters on the dirt track. We were blessed for this solitary moment with the tiger. The continuous alarm calls by cheetal and sambar unfortunately also directed other safari vehicles towards the tiger and us. For as soon as they arrived, the tiger chose to cross into the jungle, not to be seen again that day.”