Voyager
hasing
TIGERS ON SAFAR I IN INDIA
Story and photography by Kevin Revolinski
he driver and the guide each lean out over their jeep doors to scrutinize the dirt road for tracks. “Going this way,” the driver says, pointing, and we continue down a winding lane through teak forest and Indian ghost trees, peeling and paling through colors as they slowly turn white this time of year. We’ve been bumping around for days, kicking up clouds of dust in an open safari jeep. We ride in back, covered with blankets and hot-water bottles from the lodge on cold mornings. The sun is intense in the afternoon, the dry season offering no cloud protection. No one minds or complains; we are caught up in the hunt. We’ve invested time and money to come to Madhya Pradesh, a state in the central highlands of India, to see a rare creature: the mighty tiger. This isn’t the instant gratification of a game drive in the Serengeti, where there are wide-open grasslands, herds of elephants, zebras, giraffes, and wildebeests, and the likely chance of seeing lions. This is a slow burn. Detective work. A patient hunt. This shouldn’t be surprising; the tiger population in the world has long been declining from somewhere around 100,000 in the early twentieth century to today’s numbers of less than 3,900 in the world. The biggest of the big cats, the tiger, is extinct in several of its native lands and declining in number elsewhere— except in India. Although only 11 percent of its territory remains, India reported
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a 30 percent increase in its tiger numbers in 2015. The six designated tiger reserves in Madhya Pradesh are the best bets for spotting one. It’s been four days, and all we get are clues. A paw print. Scratch marks on a tree. A roar off in the distance. The driver stops for a mahout who leans forward on his elephant mount, pointing back along the jungle path from where he came. “He says he saw one this morning,” the driver relays. Over the whine of the jeep’s motor and the rattle and creak of its frame as it traverses the rough road, our driver can hear something in the distance. “There,” he says. “Warning cries.” These are the danger calls of the langurs, black-faced monkeys with tails longer than their bodies. They are the watchmen of the forest: they get vocal when danger passes beneath the safety of their treetops. Then there’s the bleat of a sambar, a large type of deer. The smaller spotted deer are spooked, ears turning like parabolic antennas, heads up from the grasses they have stopped chewing. We wait, but still, there’s nothing.
