Birding with Ram Gopalakrishnan: Tadoba tales: tigers, traffic jams and more

We were hot, irritated and starved of tea the first afternoon (pretty serious if you are a city-lubber used to a few cups to get through the average stressful day). Our mammal sightings on our first safari were only the obligatory spotted and sambar deer. Bird sightings were few and our naturalist hosts were in another vehicle. I was wondering if I had chosen the wrong sanctuary.

Then our guide suddenly halted and reversed the vehicle. He looked along a fire-line made by the forest dept and exclaimed "leopard"! A frantic scramble ensued to spot the handsome large animals striding majestically about fifty meters away. They stayed in sight long enough to get a few photos before moving off into the undergrowth, leaving a trail of chital and langur alarm calls in their wake. Somehow all the tiredness and heat all vanished, and we high fived each other in glee. A few minutes later we get a glimpse of a sloth bear scampering away from the road. Jealous colleagues who had got into other vehicles took envious glimpses of our photos! Such is the random nature of animal watching in a forest.

It used to be that Kanha, Banghavgarh or Ranthambore, were where you went when you wanted to see tigers. No longer: Tadoba is the new kid on the block with tigers to match up with the big boys. This dry deciduous forest, where temperatures can soar to 45 degrees in summer, is being managed increasingly professionally from a tourism standpoint with online bookings and Maruti gypsies driven by authorized drivers with an official naturalist /guide in each vehicle.

Day two started off with a profusion of bird calls. The grey jungle fowl was everywhere, both calling and scampering across the road. The golden oriole, black naped monarch, racket railed drongo, Tickell's blue flycatcher and the yellow footed green pigeon all made an appearance. A brown fish owl glared at us from close quarters. A crested hawk eagle posed close enough for us to get details of individual feathers on its crest. This forest is crawling with Oriental honey buzzards: though called a buzzard, this bird is essentially a honeycomb eater and has evolved hard scales over its face to prevent bee stings and delicate talons to rip open honey combs. A short-toed snake eagle swooped low overhead. A red-wattled lapwing repeatedly dive bombed an Indian thicknee that was probably too close to its nest. We saw the common hawk cuckoo: also known as the brain fever bird for its manic crescendo calls, it is heard commonly but seen uncommonly.

Although we heard alarm calls and waited patiently, there was no sign of any big cat. Finally after four hours of driving with the afternoon sun blazing down, we headed towards the exit. That's when our naturalist host noticed something twitching in the dense bamboo forest. Turned out to be the ears of a tiger! We could see it facing us lying down through the thick bamboo, but darkness set in soon. The evening safari yielded excellent views of a couple of large gaur bulls and the pugmark of a large male tiger held out promise for tomorrow. A savannah nightjar lay perfectly camouflaged by the roadside, and only its loud call led us to detect it and get some memorable photos. We wound down the day with two lifers: the red spurfowl and the barred buttonquail, both spectacularly patterned ground dwellers.

Of course the mantra in every tiger reserve for the educated wildlife watcher is to never look for the tiger. You're better off looking at the birds, the trees and the lesser mammals, to get a more wholesome experience. But somehow the thrill of expecting to see a big cat around each corner never goes away, just like it is for the average noisy, pan chewing, noisy tourist (the arre yaar, tiger jaldhi dikha do bhai type). And somehow the noisiest, most brightly dressed tourist is the one who usually gets to see the tiger the closest and the longest, much to the irritation of the perfectly camouflaged erudite wildlife lover! Perhaps the tigers come to see the noisy tourist out of curiosity, not the other way around.

Good to know that tigers are thriving in this forest despite villages, with fields and schools, right in the middle of the tiger reserve. Truly a difficult life for the villagers, having to travel for miles to the nearest market and often having their crops raided. Hope the handsome government package of Rs 10 lakhs per family and equivalent land outside will be accepted by the villagers: both they and the tigers will benefit. Tourism is transforming the economy here. Where there was a single state owned hotel, a dozen have sprung up, offering rooms from luxury style to the basic roof over your head. Most rural families here, unable to make a sustainable living off the parched land, have a finger in the tourism pie. Maharashtra has many farmer suicides: is tiger tourism then the way out, at least around forests? Gives people an incentive to preserve the forest anyway.

Well if you ask me whether I would rather go on a tiger safari on jeep or birdwatching on foot, the answer is pretty clear. Better to rack up a few dozen species than waiting endlessly for the Lord of the jungle.

But when he does show up, what a show it becomes!