Just had the best Tiger sighting of my life. I was driving to the Tribal NGO place in the jeep when this large male tiger crossed the road right in front of me. I stopped the jeep and switched off the engine. This tiger walked into some nice green grass, glared at me for more then a min and all along flicking it's tail. Then slowly he melted into the forest. I'm kicking myself for not having my camera with me at that time.

Anyway was a lovely sighting and something that I will remember for a long time to come. Also got to see the tiger after almost 2 months.

Last night while having dinner, we suddenly heard a loud cry of an animal, followed by an elephant thrumpet and then whole forest around us just came alive. All the monkeys in the camp start screaming out, the pet dogs were getting restless and deers were giving alarm calls from all around. I could even hear langur at a distance. All this was coming from just 200m from the camp.

I tried talking to the guests, and none of them seemed interested. So I just took my torch and jumped out of the camp trying to find out what happened. I could not go beyond 50m as the forest got too dense and it was pitch dark to see anything. I searched around for a while and came back to the camp and all the noises eventually died out after 15 min.

I was pretty sure a big cat ( tiger or leopard ) had killed something nearby.

Today after the morning trek, I took the local tribal and went into the forest in search for the carcass. Since there were no routes into that area and since we did not have a knife to hack our way through, we just crawled through all the thorny bushes, jumped rocks to reach places and even rolled on the ground to slip under some brances. After more then a hour of searching, zillion scratches on my body and after tearing my T-shirt, we finally found the dead body of a HUGE male sambar deer. Most of the body was intact and the tiger had eaten only back of the animal. I took some snap's, but can only upload them later as I'm running low on disk space.

We decided not to tell anyone. If the local tribes get know about it, they will come down with knifes, chop the animal down and feast on it for weeks. Even if we tell the Forest Dept, they will cut the horns off and sell them off to make some quick buck. Besides I'm pretty sure the tiger will come back to have a second snack on the animal, so I plan to visit this carcass everyday for the next couple of days to see what happens to it.

Life's really really exciting here. More later...

shortindiangirl and chaibacca where here the last two days along with their folks. Apparently they came over after mmk mentioned I was working here. Just before they left, chaibacca gave 100 bucks to the camp elephant thinking that would hand it over to the mahout. The elephant just took the money and put it in its mouth and gobbled it down. Now the mahout is planning to wait till tomorrow morning and see if he can get the money out from its crap. heh

Was nice to have them here specially since we had this other big pile of people from HP here and all they wanted to talk during the safari was how many bug's were left in their CRM product. Come on people, when you are on a vacation, do enjoy your vacation and if you are not interested in wildlife, go to a beach resort. Don't come to a forest and start partying and dancing.

I'm still down with fever. I wish I can get well soon. Missing all the lovely treks through the jungle.

The elephants in the forests know we do not harm them directly, but they still are very careful in the presence of humans and are always on alert when they smell us. This female was staring at us for a while and then suddenly decided we were a threat and did the most amazing charge towards our jeep I've ever seen in my life.

In other news, am down with fever here. Luckly its because of cold and not because of some freak insect bite.

Past few days have been very hectic and exciting.

I got to see all the predators in the forests - The tiger, the leopard and two packs of the Indian wild dogs. Also saw few bears, elephants and lots of amazing birds. All the photos will be up once I'm back in Bangalore (which is this wednesday). The connectivity here is too slow.

Weekend was hectic. Too many guests poured in here and I ran out of place to stay. Somehow survived in the forest guesthouse and now I'm back in my room since all the guests are gone. Few guests were good, but few of them come here just to drink all day and make loads of noise. Have to put up with all of them. Yathin, Noella, Bipin, Ramnath and Praveen were down here over the weekend. Pleasant company and had a nice time with them.

Politics are creeping up here. Since I take the guests out now, the manager is getting pissed off. He used to take lot of pride in taking the guests out and got kicks when his name was mentioned in the visitors book etc. Now since my name appears and the folks in the head office read that, he is very pissed and trying to get back at me ;)

From today, I start driving one of the jeeps since now I know all the routes in the jungle and know what to do in case of elephant charges.

For the 1st time in my life, I managed to see a Tiger in the wild this morning. It was quite far, but we got to seem him for a full min. He was resting, saw us for a while, gave a huge growl and was off into the bushes. Since it was 7 in the morning with lost of mist, this is what I could manage.

The folks here who work in the camp are truly amazing set of people. They have all come from the near by tribal villages and can speak only kannada. Today while I was working on my machine, they came over and asked me if I could show them a plane. Apparently they have never seen a plane in their lives, only few times flying really high above the forests. Infact they were going gaga over the pics of Bangalore. They have never been out of 50KM radius from here, never visited bangalore, never seen the sea and never even got on a train

I open up google image search and ask them to tell me what they'd like to see. The list went on something like America, helicopter, plane, buildings etc.. I show them the thumbnails and you should have seen the excitement on their faces. One guy jumped and called all the people around and I sat here for an hour showing them pic by pic of various things. The link's very bad here to show them too many things, but I promised them I will get all the pics and videos from bangalore and show them urban life.

I plan to leave the laptop with them later in the day and show them how to use google image search. They still cannot understand how I can talk to folks around the world using the computer and the internet. For them Yahoo messenger is voodoo magic.

In other news, we got charged by a big female elephant yesterday (Too bad I was not carrying my camera then). The emphasis here is to track big game and the drivers and trackers seem least interested about the birds , insects and plants. Will try to change that in the coming days.