I
visited a friend in Nagpur few days ago, and during the trip my friend planned
Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve Chandrapur visit. He got booking from North
gate(near Khirsingi) and for morning hours.
His family, he and I started at 3 am from Nagpur on national highway
7 and then took state highway 247 and a small connecting road
between state highway 233 and 243. By
5 am we were at Khirsingi. From
Khirsingi we traveled about 20 kms in muddy road to reach gate of
Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve. In this stretch we saw first animal of
trip, a rat, it was running just like a mickey mouse, difficult to
describe in words how agile and fast it was running in head lights of
car. Every
auspicious works starts with worship of God Ganesha and sight of rat,
the vehicle of Ganesha was off course a good sign. We reached at gate around 6am and open Jeeps were waiting for us
there.
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| Cattle in village near to tiger reserve |
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| Open Jypsy ready for expedition |
We
entered the tiger reserve in open jeep, 2nd animal we saw was a black wild cat, 3rd was a wild boar and then deer. We reached the place where there was
some water and people told us that tiger was there 5 mins ago and
just went, so we roamed around 15 mins in search of his foot prints.
Saw a beautiful peacock, and herd of black face monkeys (langoor),
there were just born members in the herd. We did locate footprints of
tiger and after roaming around 15 mins we came back to water and
parked our Jeep in hope of tiger coming to drink water.
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| Tadoba Andhari Tiger Project welcoming visitors |
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| Deer |
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| Tiger footprints: round and 4 dots |
There
were few alert sounds of deer. Signal that tiger is nearby. After
waiting almost for an hour we saw tiger coming from far end of water. Guide
told us that it was a female tiger around 2 year old, tigress walked
with a panache and went near the herd of deers. Deers on the sides
were alert, with head raised and legs ready for flight reaction,
while deers on middle of herd kept eating the grass without any
worry. Tigress went quite close to them and played chase me game with
deer few times, she was in no mood to kill, she was just playing
with them.
After
playing with deer, tigress came towards us and passed in front of us,
just 15 meters away, she was a real big tigress. She then sat for 20
mins under the tree that was just 20 meters away from us. All of us
were watching her and she was watching us.
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| Tigress coming after playing with deer |
She
then stood, urinated at tree trunk to mark her territory and walked away. We all were happy
with sight of tigress so close.
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| Coming toward us |
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| Tigress resting and watching humans |
we
then started for other parts of reserve. We saw nice birds whose name
I can’t remember, one of them was resembling to kingfisher, few
more deer herds, a crocodile and a big big lizard.
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| Big lizard |
Must do/tips in Tadoba Andhari Tiger
Reserve Chandrapur:
Tiger: wait for tiger
in one place instead of running around in hope of glimpse.
Go early in the morning, its a warm area.
