Corbett Diaries

Till Mota Saal Tigress and Cubs Learn to Feed on Social Media Likes

- Samir Shukla

When I had booked myself at Dhikala in the Jim Corbett National Park where one can spend a night within earshot of a tiger roar and elephant trumpet, I had hoped to return with wonderful tales to pen down.

Since I had ambitiously decided to call them Corbett Diaries, I am doing so, but the stories that I have brought back are not exactly what I had yearned for.

If I had to choose the best sighting of not just the trip, but of all time, it would be the second morning in the grasslands. Anyone familiar with Corbett’s landscape knows it has a fine mix of grasslands in low-lying areas close to the riverbank and sal forests that climb up the hills of Terai. It is a landscape tailor-made for elephants, as the grand vistas of the grasslands dwarf the elephant herds, while the forest of tall sal trees provides them with a majestic backdrop.

A couple of tigers or rather tigresses with cubs in the Dhikala range have made it hugely popular with people who mostly frequent two locations - the jungle and social media. The tigress I met on the second day was the ‘grassland-wali’ who owns a fine piece of real estate very close to the Forest Rest House.

It was a cool morning and as I always prefer, I started a bit late. The place was infested with hard-core tiger-hunters who, for some unknown reason, firmly believe that the tiger operates on a first-come-first-serve basis. Some of them returning from the grassland helpfully told us that there was no tiger in the grassland and we should head for the high-bank. Having seen enough tigers who did not believe in waking up early, I was unperturbed, or rather happy, as my own interest is watching the jungle in peace, with or without tigers.