October 14, 2023

Friday, 10:30 PM

Zostel, Bundi, 

Rajasthan

Today morning, we went to the Ramgarh Vishadri Tiger Reserve in District Bundi of Rajasthan. The Ramgarh Vishadri is the 52nd Tiger Reserve and was notified as a tiger reserve just a little over a year ago on May 16, 2022. So it’s among the youngest tiger reserves alongside Ranipur Tiger Reserve of Uttar Pradesh (notified on October 19, 2022), Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve of Madhya Pradesh (notified on September 20, 2023) and Dholpur-Karauli Tiger Reserve (yet to be officially notified). 

Since Ramgarh Vishadri became a tiger reserve only recently, safaris are allowed only in the buffer zone while the preparations to start safari in the core zone of the reserve are currently on, having started from scratch (which explains why it’s taking a bit of time), and soon the core zone would also be ready for the safaris.

After the morning safari, the original plan was to go and click some pictures of a colony of vultures nearby but that didn’t happen because I was feeling too tired and lethargic, and decided to rest a little bit. So I came back from the safari and slept like a panda for a few hours and got up to finalize today’s Vlog for upload in the evening.

As I shared a few days back, we are thinking of altering our itinerary in favour of visiting the tiger reserves in Madhya Pradesh before traveling to Maharashtra as opposed to the original plan of covering Maharashtra first and coming to Madhya Pradesh later. But we are still undecided about it. 

However, two good things happened today, one of which was the timely upload of today’s Vlog, which is live now. We have been struggling to edit and upload on time for while now, owning majorly to quality checks that require multiple rounds of editing and reediting, but we are trying to better our process every day so that the videos could go online at a fixed time. The second good thing was that two wonderful guests came all the way from Jaipur to meet me and convey their best wishes for ATR with lots of sweets and other eatables. That’s it for today. 

PS: I am thinking of touring Bundi tomorrow and bring to you what I find there in terms of people, life and culture. Stay tuned!