Feb 2- 7th
We spent a relaxing 5 full days and 4 nights in a small 'one
tiger' town called Tala, where the entrance to Bandhavgarh Park is located in
the state of Madhya Pradesh. As Heath will recollect, a little off the beaten
track, it took 12 hours riding on 4 different busses and 2 auto rickshaws to
arrive at this town with only one main street that is also the highway. The
dusty and dirty road is dotted with small restaurants, lodges and tiny souvenir
shops. We came to hunt tigers, and this park boasts the highest density of them
in India, if not the world. It was a peaceful and relaxing place. At first I
was worried I’d be bored spending so much time here, as the overnight train from
nearby Umaria to the coast ran once a week. We had decided to spend a long time
here, rather than a quick ‘fly by’. There could be worse places to relax. Heath
and I took one memorable walk in tiger country, in the buffer zone, along the
grazing fields behind our hotel. We joked about looking up for tigers and down
for poisonous snakes, neither of which we’d hear coming to attack us! Luckily
we made it back to our hotel alive! I am sure it wasn’t that dangerous, as there were a few herders in the area. Someone
told us later that the snakes are mostly in hibernation as it is still winter.
Doesn’t feel like winter, as the heat of the day is in the high 20’s now. This
is quiet season in the area. As winter turns into summer it gets hotter and
drier, the watering holes in the park diminish, and the opportunity for tiger
spotting grows as all of the animals, predator and prey, cluster around a
smaller wet area. Because of this our hotel and, in fact, the whole town seemed
pretty quiet. There are villagers that live and farm here, but the town must be
pretty dependent on the tourist dollar. It is mandatory to have a guide and a
jeep driver to enter the park, so this provides great employment to the local
men. It was a relief to be away from the over-zealous touts of Khajuraho.
Raven fell in love with the hotel’s puppy. It was super
friendly and she taught it to swing on the wide metal swing that was in the
yard. It loved snuggling her, and would fall asleep on her lap. Between
safaris, school work, eating and visits to the internet place, the puppy and
her would hang out and play. If the
puppy was busy playing with its mother, Raven would hang out with one of the
wandering cows. She is intent on petting every cow in this country. Every walk
we ever take has at least two ‘cow pet’ stops. Every puppy is ‘the cutest
puppy’ and every calf ‘the cutest cow’.
Some days there is little else that she enjoys about India, so we
patiently give her the time to do this en route to where ever we are going.
Personally, I pass on petting the ‘scabby dogs’, but Heath and Raven love to
scratch the cows and will pet the friendly puppies. We are leery off petting
the ‘odd ones’ as the potential for rabies is high. Hand washing is mandatory
after these ‘hands on’ experiences.
We enjoyed cooling rains and a sky show on one of our nights
in Tala. The storm moved quickly over us but we enjoyed the wicked thunder and
lightning, the first rain storm in India for us. The lightning and thunder
arrived just at sundown, after dinner. We happily ran through the warm rain,
then sat on our porch watching the sky light up and the storm pass.
The food at our hotel took over an hour to prepare, but it
was excellent and cheap. They had no
physical menu, so we’d order the traditional tali each dinner and stuff
ourselves with fresh chapatti and curried vegetables. Like Nepal, food takes a long time to make,
and it isn’t unusual for a kitchen staff to run to the store or market to
purchase an item such as bread or curd. Many times in restaurants we’ll order
something on the menu and be told it is unavailable. Menus are typically fairly
expansive, but they don’t stock all the ingredients, nor do any western style
‘in advance’ food prep. If you order an item that takes a while to cook, for
example, potatoes, expect to wait a while. Dishes don’t always come to the
table in the order you’d expect. Often Heath’s coke or our chai would arrive
after the main course. We have learnt (and I am still learning) to be fairly
patient with this process, as there isn’t anything we can do about it, except
don’t arrive at dinner gnawingly famished.
Feb 7th
This morning we tried to leave on a 10 am bus to take us 30
kms to Umaria, where we planned to get a hotel near the train station, sleep
until 4am then catch our train at 5:30 am. The cheapest option was catching a
local bus instead of a taxi and we could just stand outside our hotel on the
main road and flag the next one down. There was about 2 buses an hour, costing
Rs 30 each person.
We had a bit of a stall in morning, as we couldn't find the
ceramic innards to our water filter. I had washed it yesterday, and set it in
the sun to dry, then placed it on the patio table in the evening. We searched
this morning for it, but it was gone. I asked one of the hotel guys- and they
seemed to think the puppy had taken it to chew. We looked under bushes, in
leaves, everywhere, but no filter. After about half an hour, another hotel guy
showed up with our guide book, the filter part and a couple other random items
we had left on the table. He had noticed them and taken them off the table
after we had gone to bed so a wandering cow wouldn't eat them. As noted in a
previous blog, with the cow eating newspaper right out of the garbage can, we
should have been smarter and not left items out....
The delay did make us miss the bus we wanted, so we sat on
the road with our bags for over an hour and a half. One bus came by, but it was
so full, passengers were hanging out the doors. We knew we'd never be able to
squeeze on, so we waited for the next one, which wasn't quite so full. We threw
our bags on the roof and crammed on, standing room only.
The road through the park is really rough. The government
bans fixing it, so drivers don't speed through and kill crossing wild animals. There
is a bit of pavement consisting of one lane in the middle of the road, which
drops into a dirt road lane on either side. Vehicles drive on one side or the
other, choosing the smoothest path, ir-regardless of oncoming of traffic, much
like our logging roads, but busier.
The bus ride was standing room only. One Hindu guy was pretty
excited to see us on the bus. He had spent time in Chicago and Iowa and
proceeded to pull out his digital camera to show us his photos of various fat
Americans, houses, the university he attended and even an Iowan Walmart. The
bus was warm and lurching and I was getting motion sick while trying to be
polite and focus on the tiny screen of his camera. I’d quickly look, then look
out the window for a stomach easing horizon view. Eventually he offered Raven
and I his seat, which was super sweet and we accepted gladly. The bus trip took
over an hour to go 30 bumpy kilometers. Raven and I were relieved to arrive in
Umaria. From the bus station we piled into an auto rickshaw for the 3 kms to
the train station to check out the status of our on line reserved ‘waitlist'
tickets.
Success! Our overnight
sleeper tickets were confirmed. We drank a few cups of chai at the station,
snacked on coconut cookies for lunch then walked just under a kilometer to the
nearest hotel. After some bargaining, we found a small room. The bonus? It came
with a television. This was the first television we’ve seen or had in a hotel
room since Malaysia or Thailand. Guess what Heath and Raven did? Yup that’s right- both of them are confirmed
T. V. Heads, so the first thing they did was switch it on, find an English
channel, park on the bed and remain prone for the rest of the evening, with a
short break for Linner (lunch and dinner).
The best ad- Sliver
face wash with the motto “Recycle your face”.
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