October 13, 2023

Friday, 09:30 PM

Zostel, Bundi, 

Rajasthan

Wasn’t feeling all that well in the morning today, so got up slightly late. I squeezed in a little bit of extra rest to be better rested than usual. Today was a travel day, involving traveling within Rajasthan from Sawai Madhopur to Bundi, which are about 140 kilometers apart. 

Among the first things that I did today (after preparing for the next video) was re-chart the travel plans with the on-site team, and that took about an hour and half because we did a thorough rethink about the itinerary in respect of where to travel to from Rajasthan. The original plan was to go to Maharashtra (through Madhya Pradesh) from Rajasthan and then to Madhya Pradesh, but now we are thinking of first traveling to Madhya Pradesh and staying there to cover the Tiger Reserves in MP before traveling to Maharashtra. As per the original plan, we were to go through MP to Maharashtra without staying in MP, which is the part that we are reconsidering. But, for now, we are in the discussion phase and are yet to finalize how we want to go about it. We can stay in MP for a bit and cover it first before moving to Maharashtra, or stick to the original plan; as of now, both alternative are open. 

Last night, we had stayed back in Ranthambore Aaangan, which is another property owned by the owners of Ranthambore Regency, and returned to the Regency in the afternoon so that we could receive a few 2024 Calendars and other goodies that had come all the way from Delhi to be distributed on the way during ATR. 

On our way from Aangan to Regency, we saw a large crowd gathered at a location by the side of the road and also heard distressed calls of a deer. So we stopped to check what was the matter and found a completely at-ease tiger, who looked perfectly comfortable with human beings. The tiger, a female, did not seem least bit stressed by the human on-lookers and went about performing a few leisurely stretches like it were preparing for some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). And then she looked at human beings, this way and that, with what could only be described as a cold and casual, feline disregard. Since my camera was packed, I could not take any pictures with the camera but did manage to record a short video and take a few picture with the phone camera.  

What’s a bit disturbing about it is that the tigers are living so close to the human population now that they are completely unstressed about human presence around them, which is a dangerous situation, for they are not cows and monkeys (and even those can be occasionally dangerous) but hunting carnivores capable of striking lethally in a flash, if provoked, or if they feel threatened, even if unprovoked, for any reason. So the human-tiger proximity makes the human-animal conflict more likely. Tigers belong in the jungle and as long as they are wary of human being, things are perfectly fine.

We came to Ranthambore Regency, and received the goodies for all who we meet on our journey. Mumma Khurana left for Delhi for a bit and will be back soon. In the meanwhile, we’ll miss our one-person circus (safe to say it here; she hardly reads the newsletters).