The Ranthambore National Park is one of the most famous, and also the largest in northern India. It is about 2 hours by comfortable airconditioned train (or 7 hours by local bus which gives one a more in-depth experience of local villages etc.) from the popular tourist destination of Jaipur (where the closest airport is). Jaipur (known for the red city with the famous palace, and semi-precious stone trading) is in the area of Rajasthan, which is one of India's most popular tourist destinations. There are a variety of reasonable quality, and very reasonably priced, hotels in the road leading to the national park, all of which can organise you onto a safari, either on a shared open-top vehicle carrying about 20 people, or in smaller groups on a jeep.

This National park was formed in 1955, officially became a national park in 1980, and then was enlarged in 1984 to cover an area of 392 square kilometers. Poaching and other human-related problems decreased the tiger population from 44 in 1982, to only 24 in 2006 when I was there. The good news is that the tiger population is now on the increase, with 14 cubs sighted in 2008.

The time I visited the park was towards the end of the dry season, before the monsoons were due to begin. The season was obvious from the state of the vegetation in the park, which was mostly dry and yellow. The atmosphere of the park was truly amazing . . . an extremely evocotive taste of "old India". Despite being with a group of about 20, I could percieve that aprt from the small groups of tourists, there were very few people for many miles in any direction, which was a huge contrast to most of India which is heavily populated.

During the first safari I did into Ranthambore, I didn't see any tigers, but the experience was still very well worth the trip. The second safari (safari's are for a few hours either just after dawn, or just before sunset, the rest of the day being uncomfortably hot) I glimpsed a tiger down in a shallow cave, from about 20 meters away. Then on the third trip the guide got a message that tigers had been spotted on a kill, and off we went. We stopped about 20 meters away from a mother tiger and her adult cub on a sambar deer they'd recently killed just off the edge of the track!! Then as I watched, her other adult cub joined them . . . we watched for about 40 minutes in total. It was just amazing, watching these 3 wild tigers so close to us, going about their lives as if we weren't there.

The concept of tigers so close was a scary one, because we were in an open-topped vehicle and the guides don't carry guns, so if the tigers had wanted to suppliment their diet with one of us, there would have been nothing to stop them! Actually, the only time the tigers paid us any attention at all, was when one of the tourists used a flash on their camera (after being told not to) which drew a quick snarl and a moment of sublimely focussed attention from one tiger.

The whole scene was just incredible, with these 3 tigers feasting on their kill just by the side of the track, and a one of a troup of langur monkeys screaming its warning call at them from the top of a short tree just opposite. The dry trees, sparse vegetation and the scents of dust and forest in our nostrils. Then the sureal addition of a jeep and two open-topped vehicles full of tourists watching them and constantly taking photos. The tigers seem very well used to humans, and mostly ignored the presense of us and the vehicles, even when we slowly drove past them . . . at one point I was only about 4 meters away from these magnificant wild tigers.

The three tigers I saw, later featured in a TV programme that I saw . . . it was fascinating to see the same beautiful and powerful animals in more detail and from a different perspective. But being there myself was still incompararbly better than seeing them on TV, because of the whole atmosphere and ambience that the direct experience conveys.

I did one more safari after that . . . the Indian hotel staff could not understand why I went back again because the concept of taking snap-shots of a tiger was what they related to, where as I was thoroughly entranced by the whole atmosphere of the park, and interested in far more than the tigers however amazing they were.

There are more than 270 species of birds in that one park alone . . . we saw a wide variety of them, including a male paradise flycatcher flying nearby . . . a gorgeous pale powdery-blue bird with it's feathery tail many times as long as its small body. We also saw vultures and, near the few sources of water, a great variety of small birds including a green wren-like bird and many other beautiful and exotic species. Peacocks were also a common wildlife experience in Ranthambore, and shockingly resplendant in their bright plumage among the dull earthy browns and ochres of the dried-out park. On one of my trips, a bird expert from a nearby city in India was among the tourists, and happy to provide details of all the birds we saw which added an interesting intellectual element to the raw experience.

Another time we spent a while looking at a leopard sillhouetted on the top of a cliff . . . rather a long way away but still clearly visible and wonderful to see. The most commonly sighted mammals in the park are deer, mostly chital (spotted deer, India's most common deer) and the larger sambar.

Langur monkeys (which often associate with spotted deer) are also very common there and powerfully evocotive of the exotic oriental atmosphere I loved so much. Also notable in Ranthambore are the banyan trees, so characteristic of tropical Asia, with their many contacts with the ground and rope-like branches intertwined and sometimes growing through each other to create a fascinating and beautiful latticework.

Crocodiles were common in the lakes, as were egrets and other birds around the edges, and some of the old red-stone buildings of the Ranthambore palace which the park was named after, add ethnic elements to the gorgeous scenery.

We spotted a Jackal by the side of the track and watched that for a while . . . watching wildlife is similar to what someone said about wars . . . long periods of inactivity with very occasional dramas! Still, just being in the evocotive ambience of the park was a wonderous experience for me. We also briefly spotted a mongoose and Indian gazelle.

The guides who work at the park were generally excellent (years ago, one park staff was involved in poaching, but all the staff I met were very good), and obviously cared deeply about the park and the wildllife in it, and it seems to me that paying the entrance fee to the park helps contribute to the continual upkeep of such a spectacular and immensely valuable wildlife resource for the world today. In my observation, the tourists in the park had little detrimental effect on the wildlife, which generally almost ignored us.

I recommend this trip very highly to anyone with an interest in wildlife photography, wildlife art, or wildlife and nature in general.

Source :- Wikipedia