Day 6 - Tuesday Feb 26 - Best Game Show Ever.

Mums is back to 100% and ready for 6 AM Game Ride, this time in the front (more padded, less view) seat to spare the lumbar.  The staff gave us all big hot water bottles and we bundled up for the open Gypsy ride to get in line for the park. We go to the center of the park where the soil is black (Kanha means black soil.) Two adorable Indian Scops Owls peek out of their tree. 

We see swamp deer… in 1970 only 66 remained in the world because they only eat certain grasses and their habitat was destroyed.  The Swedish government funded a recovery program and now about 400 are in India… Some are kept behind a very tall fence so the lovely tigers can't eat them until the Swamp deer are ready for a fair fight.

We see wild boars, tiger scratch marks, and park guards walking!  We listen for alarm calls from the Barking Deer (who knew) and monkeys.

 Two rangers on elephants give us directions to where they saw a mother tiger and her four yearling cubs.  What a morning!  The Bengals come right across where are parked.  Five tigers in one sighting.  The mother tiger called continuously with a low rumble and her four huge babies just moved on. Breathtaking experience.

We can't tell one tiger from another in the photos but the Tarun wants the shots so he can post them in the tiger website.  They have an 'ap' that identifies each tiger by the flank stripes and we can then follow our tiger on the web during it's lifetime.  Really.

We ate our morning snack in an enclosed facility so no food attracts birds or other animals.  It had clean bathrooms and an interesting museum of sorts explaining more about Kanha.  For instance, 27 villages were removed from the area and 18 more are scheduled to move out.  Over 400 species of birds, almost 200 butterflies. The Sal tree and bamboo are main plants plus 800 other species.

Out of the part by 10:30 AM.  Lunch at the lodge and this time Steve lost his cookies and had to skip the afternoon ride.  All he missed were a mongoose, a rock pigeon, a great rocket tailed grongo (?), a changeable hawk eagle, crested serpent eagle, a black ibis and red headed black stork.

Back at the lodge, Steve is abed and missed the Indian cooking lesson presented by Dimple and Jai.  Last thing he wanted to know about was food.  He also missed the afternoon game hunt consisting of a lot of driving about to see nothing much.  We did see the smallest duck in the world… so small I have no photo of it.  We saw two golden jackals on the way back to the lodge.  After dinner all but Steve walked out to the bridge for star gazing…the glorious full moon washed out some of the constellations, but it was still great fun.  Then for the sari demonstration:  Dimple let each of the girls (Hanna, Janet and me) pick one of her saris and then she showed us how to wrap up.  I walked back to the room to share my glamor with Steve and he mustered a nod… 'nice.'  Hope he's better tomorrow, but I think I know how he feels.