Trundle into a jungle

I set out to look for Puran to help contain my indignation. He was huddled up in a dingy staff quarter along with four others — all cooped up in the stifling confines of a jam-packed room. Why our drivers and guides — the backbone of the wildlife tourism industry — are not housed in more hospitable conditions is a failing the higher authorities of the park must account for. However, any thoughts of our physical displeasure were temporarily kept at bay by the eager exchange of “jungli khabar” between the better-informed individuals of the lot.

Soon enough, dinner beckoned, making Puran and I part company with our amiable hosts. A couple of lazy hours later, we headed for some much-needed sleep. Little did we know that this simple want of ours was soon going to be severely compromised. On reaching the dormitory, we found the doors to the room bolted tightly from the inside, and no amount of knocking or thumping proved enough to rouse the inhabitants out of their sleep.

We wandered around a hushed campus aimlessly — the quiet no longer appealing — in an attempt to gather our wits and take stock of our predicament. A few minutes later, Puran was blessed with a rather ludicrous brainwave: why not sleep the night in the safari Gypsy of ours? A laboured trudge to the car brought us to an eerily empty parking area. We scrambled into the Gypsy and made ourselves comfortable by stretching out on the seats. The splendid weather lulled us into an unruffled reverie, only to be wickedly cut short by an army of winged tormentors — bloodthirsty mosquitoes.

Necessity being the mother of all hard-pressed inventions, we tried unfurling the cloth rolled up at the top of the gypsy’s windscreen. While we were thick in the process of spreading the “hood”, a chital pierced the vapidity of its gloomy haunts by yelping a cry of alarm. The calls were soon picked up by a couple of other members of his tribe who gave vent to their apprehensions with an equal amount of vigour. Puran and I strained our ears to pick up what the jungle had to say as it began to ready itself for the dramas of the night. The calls, now infrequent, began to die down and, just as we prepared to sneak into what was now a fully-covered Gypsy, the chital blared out a call once again. But this time, it wasn’t the mortified voice of a deer mouthing its fear; it was the testosterone-fuelled rutting call of a sexually-inflamed stag, vehemently pleading for a mate.

What an awfully inappropriate time to mix passion and caution, I wryly thought. But I guess reckless sexual abandon isn’t the sole preserve of man. Although the covers were firmly pulled over, a faint, but deep-throated, growl caught my ear. I sat upright, and slowly lifted a part of the overarching cover in order to hear better. And just as I had expected, a second, more prominent growl followed soon after. And this time, both Puran and I had heard it — loud and clear. It came from within 50m of where we lay, beyond the fenced perimeter of the parking area. The maker’s identity wasn’t in question. While we were in the mood to slumber, the big cat had chosen to cease her nap.

A fresh spate of alarm calls rang out from the riverbed behind us. A good 500 diagonal yards separated the grasslands lying ahead of us from the river bed. The striped clan had another member on the move as it couldn’t have been the same one of earlier acquaintance. The riverbed was laid claim to by a rival female. The loss of her sub-adult male cub was the reigning talk of the town. The cub, brutalised by a full-grown male, had succumbed to his wounds, and, was now being mourned by those who had grown to love the sight of him showboating in the wild. One of the guides claimed to be so severely grief-stricken by the news that he chose to forego three days’ worth of hefty financial perks in the midst of a booming tourist season, in order to help himself lament his loss back home.

Our frenetic searches for the striped cats had drawn an uninspiring blank during the day, and here, on either side of us — ensconced in the same Gypsy, in the middle of the night — were two tigresses traipsing through their territories. By now, we had passed five long hours in the wretched confines of the Gypsy. It was now only an hour until dawn, and with no throaty growls to spark a sense of rapture, each one of these 60 remaining minutes began to weigh heavily on my mind. I felt my patience snap. I squirmed out of the jeep’s debilitating confines to find myself a more suitable resting spot, which, in all likelihood, didn’t exist at that ungodly hour. And lo and behold, just as I was about to hop out of the Gypsy, came the startlingly loud “thwack” — the sound of a branch being cracked. There couldn’t have been more than 30 yards between the sound and me, but thankfully, between those 30 yards, lay a solar fence, for I instinctively knew that the sound was caused by a wild elephant.

A blue tint bathed the sky, signalling the onset of dawn. This meant that the occupants of my dormitory would finally see out their unflappable slumber in order to freshen up for their morning safari. I decided to head back to the dormitory and help myself to at least an hour’s worth of untroubled sleep before setting out on the morning drive. But strange are the ways of the wild, and rarely do they ever comply with a lowly tourist’s aspirations. As I finally had the hard-earned pleasure of plopping my head onto a pillow, I was greeted by the sight of two bees hovering ominously close to a light bulb placed only a few inches from my feet. I wasn’t going to risk another sting in this tale, and chose to call it a day, by temperamentally trundling into the next one.