testmeat photoblog

high on my wish list when i travelled to india was to see some animals, and the very top of that particular list was to see a tiger. whilst there are a number of tiger reserves dotted around the country, the chance of actually seeing this endangered animal in the wild is still extremely rare. so it was with significantly more hope than expectation that my friend and i made our way to bandipur tiger reserve. after spending a rather frustrating morning failing to arrange a safari, we decided to take a taxi directly to the national park to see if we would have more success in person. we arrived to discover that there were no jeeps available and in fact they were all booked out for the next few weeks. however there was an alternative option which was to take a shorter trip around the reserve in a minibus type vehicle. this had the advantage of being cheaper, but the disadvantage of carrying more passengers who would produce more noise and therefore impact the possibility of getting close to the wildlife. also the vehicle was far less agile than a jeep, so it would have to stick to more forgiving terrain and not venture as deep into the reserve. all in all it was undoubtedly a shitty option, but it became increasingly clear that it was our only option.

another complication to the whole afternoon was deciding what we would do after this safari. all of our bags were in the back of the taxi, and the driver was becoming impatient while we tried to make a decision. there was nowhere to stay close to the park, and it wasn't possible to call another taxi or take public transport to a nearby town. i thought that we should pay the taxi driver to wait for us and then transport us after the safari whereas my friend thought that we should leave our bags in the ticket office and then hitchhike. the conversation between us became somewhat tense as we debated these options, not helped by an impatient driver and a shouty ticket office guy who were both pressuring us to make a decision.

after taking way too long we eventually settled on the taxi option and i joined the back of what had now become a pretty lengthy queue for the safari bus tickets. it moved slowly, but at the very moment i made it to the front of the line the shouty ticket man announced that there had been a last minute cancellation and a jeep was now available for anyone who wanted it. my hand joined a forest of others in shooting into the air, and in an unexpected display of equity the shouty man gave me priority as i was next in line. we gratefully snapped up the tickets, but it wasn't until we made our way to the vehicle that we realised we weren't filling up spare seats on a jeep, we had the whole jeep to ourselves. so along with the driver and a tracker we jumped inside and were greeted by this monkey when we finally made our way inside the tiger reserve.

there's more to this story, but i've already written a lot of words so i'll save that for the next post. in the meantime here's a looping video from a few other shots of this gray langur