For those of you neophytes who do not know which poem this phrase is from, you will be pleased to know that the answer is at the bottom of this blog. You will also be pleased to know that I belonged to this class of neophytes until I typed the above phrase into Google two minutes ago.
Anyway, on with the blog. After the rafting trip, we decided to take another trip from Delhi, this time to Ranthambore National Park, the hunting grounds of the Maharajas of Madhopur, in the state of Rajasthan. Our train ride from Delhi's Nizamuddin station took 5 hours and passed quite peacefully. It was quite phenomenal to be able to book the railway tickets online (at http://www.irctc.co.in) and have the tickets arrive by mail the next day! We did meet a Punjabi couple also going to Ranthambore who insisted that Delhi was going to become the greatest city in India and this would be 100% due to the Punjabis of Delhi who, according to them, liked to spend and were driving the economy of India. Anyway...
In Ranthambore, we stayed at the Tiger Safari Resort. Quite a funny experience actually. We realized that we were on the Lonely Planet trail here. Everybody staying at the hotel was non-Indian and the hotel staff were quite surprised to have to talk to a guest in Hindi. The dining room at the hotel was the funniest place - 100% Europeans, each person sitting with the same India Lonely Planet guide. How depressing! We have to get off of this Lonely Planet trail soon - even Lonely Planet has a name for its most-often-used routes - in Peru, they call it the Gringo Trail! The photo here is of the dawn at Ranthambore - beautiful (and cold!).
Next morning, at 6am, we set off on a canter which is a bus that has been sawed in half (i.e. the top half has been taken off), leaving a nice open air viewing platform for the game drive. Again, our canter had 100% Europeans on it. When I asked the driver why this was the case, he said that it was pure chance .. somehow I don't believe what he said.
We set off for the park - at the entrance to the park, we stopped for a half-hour as the driver went to get the permit to enter the park. The canter was surrounded by vendors trying to sell warm clothes, balaclavas, hats, sunglasses and park souvenirs. As we approached the park entrance, I heard one of the vendors say in Hindi, "Here come the European donkeys, let's go get them." The canters with Indian guests were left alone by the vendors - instead, the vendors focused on the canters with the Europeans. And another vendor had an argument with an American on our canter as the American tried to correct the vendor's pronunciation of "sweater", which the vendor pronounced as "shooter." Both sides were in the wrong for arguing about this but perhaps it was too early in the morning for everybody. It didn't help that the drivers did not know any English whatsoever. Anyway...
Both game drives lasted about 3-4 hours each. The Ranthambore reserve is very picturesque. The fort dominates the area (as you can see in the photo to the left). The area is mostly sparsely forested. There are several lakes/ponds that surround the fort - at this time of the year, so many months after the monsoons, many of the lakes/ponds have started drying up and so the animals have to all congregate in a crowded manner at the water areas. It makes for interesting viewing.
We were disappointed not to see any tigers on our two trips. The closest we got was tiger pugmarks that had already been circled by another guide (see photo to the left).. But we saw a number of other interesting animals, including several ungulates (pardon the SAT word.. :-) ) such as sambar, neelgai and cheetal plus many other animals such as crocodiles, peacocks, monkeys (langoors), wild boar, .. Here are some of the photos from our game drives:
The phrase in the title of this blog is from a poem by William Blake. Click here to see the full text of the poem. For those of you who are wondering why this phrase has been picked by Smruti, please email her because I DO NOT KNOW! :-)
-Dev
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