We had an interesting trip one afternoon to the Ranthambore Fort. From outside itself it comes across as an imposing structure. And within the fort too, there are many interesting places each with its own intriguing story. By the way, Ranthambore, is the place where the confluence of two hill ranges, Aravalli and Vindhyachal, takes place. As soon as we got down from our jeep, we were surrounded by a group of local guides offering to give us a guided trip to the fort at a very reasonable price. Since we were not interested, we politely refused. And to our surprise, they went away also. It was very much in contrast to what we had earlier experienced at places like the Taj Mahal or Fatehpur Sikri; their persistence had almost made us exasperated. One person at Ranthambore, however, continued to follow us. We realized he was a young boy, and asked him what was he looking for. We were taken for a surprise when he offered his services as a guide. He had an innocent face and sweet voice. We were charmed by him. We negotiated with him his rates. He seemed a seasoned bargainer, but finally we settled for a price to each other’s satisfaction. He was a 12-year old boy, student of class 7. He started with giving us a brief history of the fort; to our amazement, he was right about the dates and names connected with the fort.
He told that the word, Ranthambore, is made from 3 peaks which are seen here: Ran, Tham, and Bore. What we learnt from him was that the fort was more than 1000 years old and many dynasties ruled over it depending upon who was ruling Delhi at that time. But most of the time, it remained with the local kings and was their favourite ground for tiger hunting. But some of them were great conservationists, and laid down rules for conserving the nature. He took us to all the three temple seen during visit to the forest, one of these was an old Jain temple. Whenever, out attention wavered, he would lose no time in asking us to listen to him. To make his narrative interesting, he also told us what VIPs had visited this fort and what movies were shot there. He aimed to study at least till graduation and get a job in the secretariat. His father, though with limited means, was also keen that his two children should study. That the family did not have an idiot box at home was proof that he was serious.
Our guide took us to all the important sites and we returned very satified. We thanked him and wished him well in his life.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
RANTHAMBORE FORT
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
RANTHAMBORE NATIONAL PARK: WILD LIFE
Though for most of the visitors, the single most important sighting would be of a tiger, however, this park like most of the other wild life parks, has many other attractions in form of animals, birds, and many kinds of plants and trees. And then, Ranthambore Fort in itself demands an independent visit.
The other wild life that we could see during our visit were spotted deer, sambhar deer, neel gai, wild boar, monkeys and langurs, and crocodiles. The spotted deer are among the most beautiful deer in the wild. It is so graceful in its walk, and runs almost effortlessly. We could see many small and large herds of spotted deer, and each herd any many adult males and females. However, in case of sambhar, there was one adult male with many females in a single herd. Due to its antlers, it looks majestic and formidable, and walks upright showing off its antlers: it is for no small reason that it is popularly known as ‘ghamandi barasingha’. There were large number of monkeys and langurs all over the park; the antics of the young ones were a joy to watch. You could see them playing and making pranks on one another for hours.
We could also see a large number of birds. The most common, of course, were peacocks and tree pies. Peacocks at this time of the year were not in their full attire of colourful feathers after having shed their heavy plume around Diwali time. The males were not in their dancing mood also, this being not their mating and breeding season. The tree pies were everywhere and the boldest creatures in the park. It, being an opportunistic bird, would come very near visitors in hope of some food. Many people were feeding them nuts and bread from their hands. We also could spot brown fish owl, spotted owlets, black vulture, whitebacked vulture, sand pipers, snipes, quails and partridges, kingfishers, woodpeckers, lapwings, and many other water birds.
Thus, it was a very satisfying visit to Ranthambore, worth visiting again and again.
RANTHAMBORE NATIONAL PARK
Finally we made it to Ranthambore, the sanctuary we had been longing to visit for a long time. The sanctuary had its reputation for having the friendliest of tigers, and visitors had returned not disappointed. The Lord of the Jungle had been obliging visitors to its sanctuary by giving them an easy audience. May be, that has been the precise reason for its continuously dwindling numbers everywhere including Ranthambore. The greed of man had exploited the easy and friendly nature of tiger to kill it for flimsy reasons, the most laughable being that its mortal remains are potent aphrodisiacs. It should have preserved its savage nature to preserve itself and for preservation of its progeny in the country which prides itself in having tiger as its national animal.
We had seen tigers in our first visit to Kanha, but the Lord had eluded us in many other popular sanctuaries. Now we know why. The Lord was not acting ‘pricey’, but because it had ceased to exist in many of the sanctuaries. It is nothing less than a national shame that our National Animal is not spotted in the wild but is seen more frequently in the zoo. However, over the years I have come to realize that if you are visiting a forest, go for many things other than tigers; if you happen to chance upon a tiger, it is your bonus. Fortunately, many of the forests in India still have many other attractions left, though we made a total mess of Project Tiger and at the same time neglected everything else in the name of tiger. So when Kush last month suggested planning a visit to Ranthambore, we all jumped at the idea. Since time was short, we decided to go there by train rather than driving all the distance by car. There are a number of trains which go to Sawai Madhopur from Delhi, and the park is just 11 km away from the station. It is a small town and has many hotels and guest houses catering to all kind of pockets and taste.
We were lucky in our first ever visit to the Ranthambore National Park as within first 15 minutes of our entering the park we made a sighting of a tiger. It was a young but fully grown female tiger, which we would later find, called T-17. We saw it hidden behind a growth of bushes looking intently at a herd of spotted deer (chital) and ready to ambush it. And suddenly she stood up, came into open and charged towards the deer. Alas, it was unsuccessful, as tigers are successful in only 1 out of 5 chances. The herd of deer was successful in escaping to safety, and we were successful in sighting our first tiger at the Ranthambore National Park. T-17 is daughter of a world famous tigress, Machhli, who has been heroine in many stories on Ranthambore and also the leading actress in a number of documentaries. For next 45 minutes she played hide and seek with us, and then decided enough was enough, and disappeared into the river bed. What a majestic creature she was; I can not forget her carefree gait and attitude, and the total indifference and disdain she reserved for us. But even that was welcoming coming from the Lord of the Jungle.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
ROSE FESTIVAL
This Sunday the Rose Society of India organized its annual Rose Festival in Delhi. Enjoy the slide show. All photographs are courtesy Vasuman. Cheers
