<em>By Bob Berghaier, Ex-Zookeeper
Tour Consultant, Premier Tours
Philadelphia, PA
<a href="mailto:bobb@premiertours.com"> bobb@premiertours.com</a></em>

From 4-20 December 2010, I was in India looking at the eco-tourism potential of the Madhya Pradesh (M.P.) “Tiger Circuit” – Pench, Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Panna Reserves and Assam’s Kaziranga National Park. My tour was arranged by an Indian in-country tour operator – Royal Expeditions royalexpeditions.com.  Royal Expeditions is an exceptional company and our trip operated flawlessly.  They have an extensive knowledge of the wildlife of their country and have had a long history in Indian conservation.  Their trip pre-departure information on the wildlife and the ecology of each area visited is extensive and at times was like reading someone’s academic dissertation.

On arrival in India in the early morning of 4 December 2010, my traveling companion Dr. Bob Singer and I passed through the Delhi’s new airport.  It is a very modern, clean facility.   However one still has to clear Indian immigration that is not well-organized and can move at a snail’s pace.  We got to our hotel just before dawn.  On the morning of 5 December 2010 we flew from Delhi to Nagpur on a local Indian airline, Indigo, whose check–in, in-flight service and aircraft were quite good.  If you have not flown internally in India for some time, the level of security may surprise you.  To even get into the airport you have to show an actual air or e-ticket as well as a form of identification with photo.  For non-Indian travelers a passport is mandatory.  At check-in your domestic airline has to tag each piece of your carry-on at check-in before you go through a security screening including an x-ray bag check and passing through a metal detector.  After this, each tag on your carry-on has to be stamped as checked by security. Before boarding your aircraft there is a final check to make sure that each of your carry-on items has the required stamped tag.  If your item doesn’t have a stamped tag it is confiscated.

Our flight departed Delhi on time and arrived in Nagpur two hours later.  We were met on arrival and set off on our first Indian road adventure. The drive was 95km [59 mi.] and took just over two hours.   In my 31 years of overseas travel I’ve been driven in some incredible places – eastern Congo, Madagascar, Jakarta, Accra, northern Kenya, the Pan American highway in Peru and the Ecuadorian Andes.  None of these wild and woolly places prepared me for being driven on the roads of India.  With heavily decorated trucks bearing down on you, big buses with the drivers leaning on their horns to chase you out of their way, the motorcycles and mopeds, bicycles, motorized and man-pulled rickshaws, indifferent to traffic, Indian pedestrians, herds of driven cattle, lone stray cattle, goats, sheep and a pariah of dogs all on the road at various times and in some sections all on the road at once, made this a never-ending kaleidoscope of fascinating sights and close-call collisions. Within the first few hours I was convinced that the hardest working and most skilled person on the entire Sub-Continent must be the professional Indian Driver!

Traveling on the road this day, however, got me two life mammals – Hanuman langur (<em>Semenopithecus entellus</em>) and rhesus macaque (<em>Macaca mulatta</em>).  I saw both species on several occasions while on the roads in forested areas in Madhya Pradesh outside the Reserves.  I was told that the macaques in particular are often fed by passing truck drivers, many of whom are Hindu devotes of the monkey god – Hanuman, which makes the rhesus the more commonly seen wild primate on the roadside.

Our first stop on the Circuit was Pench National Park.  In India, each State administers their own conservation areas and the level of protection and management are more determined by the State government than any national authority.  The Madhya Pradesh (M.P.) Tiger Circuit is four National Parks. The southern-most is Pench, followed by Kanha, Bandhavgarh, and Panna in the north.  Each Reserve is a four to six-hour drive from the other.  Each Reserve and each entrance gate to the Reserves has a specific number of vehicles that are allowed in each day.   I was told by the Indian naturalists I met that during the busiest times of the year for the Reserves - the last two weeks of December, the first two weeks of January and the month of April - pre-booking your game drives as far in advance as possible is strongly suggested.  You are allowed in the Reserves for morning game drives starting at sunrise (about 0630hrs this time of year) and one has to depart by 1000hrs – Bandhavgarh, 1100hrs – Pench and Panna, 1130hrs for Kanha.  You can then have an afternoon drive, which starts at 1500hrs, and you must vacate each of the Reserves by sunset (approximately 1800hrs in December).

The Reserve authorities believe that the hours between game drives give the wildlife a respite from the motorized tourists.  Having a great deal of experience in African eco-tourism, this is in marked contrast to the African conservation areas I have visited.  In Africa, if you wish, you could start at dawn and not have to leave the reserve or return to your lodge/camp until dusk.  On each game drive on the Circuit a local guide must accompany you.  This is now official policy in M.P. created by the State Parliament as a way for local men to get some income from the Reserves they live adjacent to.  In theory, this policy should help build local support for the Reserves.  The local guides earn 200 rupees (a bit less than $5.00 USA) per drive + tips.  It was quickly obvious that the skill and language level of each of these men varied.  Some were much better than others but I tipped all of them a bit and the better ones who found tigers, or who knew their species of birds well, I tipped more  - up to 200 rupees, doubling their normal stipend.

I stayed two nights at the Pench Jungle Camp Lodge and Tented Camp.  This was a good introduction to the Circuit.    The Pench Jungle Camp has a 30-acre Eco-park nearby where one can do a night walk or day-birding trips.  The Eco-park is adjacent to Pench N.P. and according to my guide, naturalist Pahhir Patil, at least once per month a leopard (<em>Panthera pardus</em>) or tiger (<em>Panthera tigris tigris</em>) makes a kill here.  A night walk with Patil turned up Indian flying fox (<em>Pteropus giganteus</em>), and what I am convinced by its flight pattern and white belly was a big-eared horseshoe bat (<em>Rhinolophus macrotis</em>).  Temperatures in December at night range between 40-50°F [4.4-10°C] resulting in poor mammal viewing on this particular visit.  However, having this much area for birding walks or night mammal spotting should make Pench Jungle Camp a preferred accommodation for the serious naturalist.

We had three game drives with Patil in Pench and although we were close to at least two of them we never saw a tiger there.  However, it was here that I first experienced how the local driver/naturalist/forestry guides most frequently find tigers.  They listen to alarm calls of the deer, langur and peafowl and stake out an area, waiting for a tiger to appear. Once you know what sounds to pay attention to, one can follow the trail of the tiger or other larger carnivore as they move through the forest.  This method must work well when the vegetation is not as thick and full as it is in December or the other post-monsoon months of October, November and January.  Each of the Tiger Circuit naturalists I talked with felt that the best month for tiger viewing in their reserves was February and March.  It is then that the vegetation was open enough (cleared mostly by herbivore grazing/browsing) to more easily see the cats after they were located by listening to the alarm calls.  They all felt that in April there were more local Indian tourists which made the reserves too crowded and getting game drive reservations more difficult.  In May and June the weather is so hot that tigers tend to move around less during the limited hours the reserves are open to tourists making sightings more difficult.  Looking for tigers reminded me of looking for leopards in Africa. You need to have a driver/guide/naturalist that uses good tracking skills and has knowledge of the habits of the cats, combined with some luck in getting the opportunity to see them.

Pench is primarily Sal forest, but a large reservoir occupies a good part of the Reserve, which adds to the diversity of bird life, making it a good destination for birders as well as mammalogists.  Since Pench was my first Indian game viewing I got a few new life mammals there including spotted deer (or chital) [<em>Axis axis</em>] – very common and at a very high density, nilgai (<em>Boselaphus tragocamelus</em>) – this antelope species reminded me very much of the African eland; three striped palm squirrel (<em>Funambulus palmarum</em>); and only one gaur (<em>Bos gaurus</em>) - a single male that was sparring with a small tree.  We also saw sambar deer (<em>Cervus unicolor</em>) and a few golden jackals (<em>Canis aureus</em>) as well as both Hanuman langurs and rhesus macaques.

Pench may have as many as 50 adult tigers.  Patil and the other naturalists I spoke with at Pench thought that the tiger population is doing well in Pench and is increasing.  One naturalist I spoke to in Kanha was not so sure about this since he speculated that the large spotted deer population was perhaps an indicator of a low tiger population.  In any case, one section of the tourist area of the Reserves that we were assigned was recently closed because a female tiger had given birth to four cubs.  Other large carnivores seen with some frequency in Pench include leopard, sloth bear (<em>Melursus ursinus</em>) and Asian wild dog or dhole (<em>Cuon alpinus</em>).

Dholes are seen with some regularity here.  A pair was seen a week before our arrival.  The Tiger Circuit naturalists I talked with have noticed a pattern with dhole sightings in their respective reserves.  According to their observations dhole numbers seem to be cyclic.  Pairs or trios are seen infrequently at first.  Then the number of animals per pack increases up to a dozen or more for a few years and then the species disappears usually after a heavy monsoon season until it comes back with a pair or trio restarting this population boom and bust cycle again.  The naturalists suspect that canine distemper causes these population crashes.  With the number of feral dogs I observed on this visit to India I am not surprised that distemper or even perhaps rabies can spread quickly into a wild population of canids.  A similar domestic canine to wild canid disease transfer is believed to be the cause of the local extinction of African wild dogs (<em>Lycaon pictus</em>) in the Masai Mara in Kenya in the late 80’s early 1990s.  The tiger is certainly the main conservation mission of the M.P. Reserves, however, there is also reason for concern about the State’s dhole population.

In the morning of 7 December 2010, after our last Pench game drive we departed by road to Kanha Reserve 200km [~125 mi.] to the north.  Another Indian road adventure of five-plus hours got us to the Kanha area.  Our lodge for the next two nights – the Kanha Earth Lodge - is located in the buffer zone west of the Reserve and is part of the Indian Jungle Lodge Company - Pug Dundee Safaris.  Pug Dundee has lodges in Panna, Bandhavgarh and Earth Lodge is their newest, most modern-looking facility.  It reminded me very much of some of the African game lodges that I have seen.  Each Pug Dundee Lodge has its own team of naturalists.  Those I met were very good and I learned a lot about Indian wildlife and the management of the Tiger Circuit Reserves from them.  Pug Dundee also purchases or leases land around its lodges, which become small, private reserves.  On my first afternoon at Earth Lodge I saw a small carnivore from the porch of my room, which moved away before I could get a good look at it through my binoculars.  From how it moved and its coloration, a jungle cat was my best guess.  Although the Lodge is a half-hour from the Reserve entrance gate, the drive is interesting and in the early morning hours it becomes a predawn game drive.  I was told that during the warmer months wildlife is often spotted enroute, especially reptiles, and once a tiger was seen.

The most experienced naturalist at Earth Lodge was an enthusiastic young Indian – Harsh.  Through Harsh I was the first Lodge guest to do a night drive out of the Lodge into Kanha’s buffer zone.  I did two drives, each lasting up to two hours.  The route passed through open community land, fields and rice paddies and ended up on a river that borders the Park.  It was cold at night so animal sightings were limited although I saw jackals, spotted and sambar deer, one little Indian field mouse (Mus booduga) and on both nights a small wild canid that moved and looked like an Indian fox (Vulpes bengalensis).

We had three game drives within Kanha, two mornings and one afternoon.  Before you enter the Reserve you pass a small colony of Indian flying fox in a huge tree in the village of Khatia.  Kanha is the largest Reserve in the Circuit and is a mix of Sal forest interspaced with grasslands meadows.  The meadow most central and frequently visited by tourists is Kanha Meadow where Dr. George Schaller did his study of Indian predator/prey relationships summarized in The Deer and The Tiger published in 1967.  The park also has highland forest with thick stands of bamboo that reach up to a high plateau that is 2,900 ft. [~884m] in elevation.  We did one drive here to look for the four-horned antelope or chowsingha, which we did not find, but saw instead a small group of ruddy mongoose (<em>Herpestes smithii</em>) and an Indian muntjac or barking deer (<em>Muntiacus muntjak</em>), and our first wild boar (<em>Sus scrofa</em>).  In the lower elevations spotted deer were common, as were langur.  Jackals were frequently seen as well as sambar and four gaur.  We also saw swamp deer or barasingha on every game drive.  These are the hard ground swamp deer (<em>Cervus duvauceli branderi</em>).  During the 1970’s the population of these dropped to only 60 individuals.  A concentrated breeding program using a core population protected by a predator-proof fence, is one of India’s best conservation success stories.  As of June 2006 the estimated population is over 1,200 individuals and the subspecies is believed to be extinct in the rest of the country.

Kanha is also where I saw my first tiger, a lifetime goal for this ex-big cat zookeeper.  It was on our 2nd drive in Kanha (our 5th overall).  We were just heading back after an uneventful afternoon of wildlife viewing when on a narrow forest road ahead was a row of nearly a dozen stopped vehicles.  The word filtered down to us that two tigers (male and female) had been seen on the road before moving off into the forest.  Our forest guide quickly showed that he knew what he was doing by directing our driver into a position that allowed a short but very clear look at a large male tiger.  It was just a glimpse but produced an incredible rush of excitement in everyone who saw it.  These were the only two tigers seen in this section of the Reserve that day.  A June 2006 survey in Kanha reported 133 tigers within the Reserve.  Some local naturalists believe that the population now may be as low as 40 adult individuals.  They point to several trends, fewer tiger being seen recently and more sightings of leopards and jackals.  Tigers that leave the Reserve are sometimes poisoned due to predation on cattle.  Our naturalist also believed Kanha is not as well-watered a Reserve in comparison to Bandhavgarh.  The limited number of water sources could increase tiger to tiger aggression with resultant fatalities during the dry, hot months of May and June. The best place to see tigers in the Reserve appears to be Kanha Meadows.  A tigress with three cubs was observed there on our last drive in the park.  Upon my return I reread The Deer and The Tiger and found that Schaller also recorded a female with three cubs here over 40 years ago.  In retrospect, an indication of the presence of tigers was the several species of vultures and scavenging species of eagles that we saw around the meadow as well as numerous jackals.

It was then on to the 3rd Reserve on the Circuit – Bandhavgarh.  The drive is 250kms [~155 mi.] and for us took six hours. Due to our late departure from Earth Lodge we arrived at our accommodation, Kings Lodge, after dark.  Although we arrived safely I would highly recommend not driving at night on Indian roads. Kings Lodge is located near the Reserve’s northern boundary and the Tala entrance gate, and is located within the Reserve’s buffer zone.  It is a comfortable Lodge with good accommodations and common areas.  Our naturalist here was Karan Rana, an ex-pat Nepalese who previously worked in Chitwan Nepal’s Tiger Tops Lodge.   He had a wealth of knowledge about the wildlife of both India and his native country.  From the other Pug Dundee naturalist I discovered that Karan had trained them all.  Pug Dundee also has a nearby lodge adjacent to the Reserve boundary – Tree House Hideaway.  Tree House is located right along the Reserve boundary.  It is surrounded by a private reserve that has good bird and mammal sightings although the possible presence of Euro-Asian wild boar means that you need to be escorted by a lodge guard during dusk to dawn hours.  The Tree House also has a waterhole with a viewing hide.  I was told that the waterhole has very good game viewing, particularly during the dry season, especially for leopards that frequently jump the Reserve boundary fence to drink or hunt at the Tree House waterhole.  Occasionally from either lodge, wildlife, even wild species of cats both big &amp; small, are seen while driving to the entrance gate in the predawn hours.  On the morning of our last drive we saw an Indian hare (<em>Lepus nigricollos</em>)…..

<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2487" title="tiger3" src="http://aecetia.net/gws/aazk/wp-content/uploads/tiger3-300x242.jpg" alt="tiger3" width="300" height="242" /> <img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2488" title="tiger4" src="http://aecetia.net/gws/aazk/wp-content/uploads/tiger4-300x241.jpg" alt="tiger4" width="300" height="241" />