Parallel Parking

And although those stretches could be put to the valuable pursuits of shivering under blankets and refraining from the large-scale ingestion of clouds of dust, they’re much more pleasant with somebody to talk to.

Even more so if that somebody can migrate effortlessly between discussions on Che Guevara, the Naxalite movement, Francis Ford Coppola, and what that little bluish bird with the annoyingly shrill trill is likely to be.

The presence of Benegal at the Bandhavgarh National Reserve is part of travel firm Soulitudes’ endeavour to help people connect with local customs and traditions through their association with eminent personalities. So, at the reserve, we had tigers in the mornings and stimulating talks in the afternoon.

The portion of the Bandhavgarh Park that is open to tourists sprawls over 105 sq km, and is home to between 20 and 25 tigers—which, according to recent reports, is between 20 and 25 tigers more than Sariska. Over the larger area of the reserve, our guide cites an estimate of 60 to 65 tigers.

Bandhavgarh is also home, according to a helpful slide show that we see on our first evening there, to langurs and rhesus monkeys, peacocks, vultures, the sambar and the chital, packs of jackals and Indian wild dogs, the famous white tiger of Rewa, the itinerant leopard, and the python.

How many of them you will actually see depends entirely on the whims of fortune. The monkeys and the deer, for example, are likely to be the first animals you spot upon entering the park; you could, on the other hand, exhaust even Benegal’s formidable repertoire of conversation and still not catch a glimpse of the leopard.

The learning curve is steep. At the beginning of a safari, the trained guides look on indulgently as gumshoe tourists scramble over each other to photograph a chital; by the end of that ride, the tourists look as blasé as their guides, and only a rousing chital rendition of Norwegian Wood could inspire them to even reach for their cameras.

Perhaps it is a sign of the times, though, that Bandhavgarh cannot afford to leave the sighting of its tigers, the jewels in its crown, up to chance.

Almost two hours before the first tourists stumble sleepily into their jeeps at 6 am, trackers and rangers begin to comb the woods, following pug marks and other signs to the sites of their bounty—the sleeping tiger.

By 7 am, walkie-talkies around the park have crackled with details of the tigers’ locations. Unlucky-so-far tourists are then driven to these spots to be loaded onto elephants and taken, swaying and lumbering through the sal and bamboo, to gaze upon their feline majesties, pulsing gently in sleep, half-hidden in the bush and blissfully unaware of the Minoltas and Canons whirring just a few feet away.

This is the controversial ‘sher darshan’, or ‘tiger show’, which environmentalists have been quick to decry as a violent and artificial intrusion into the tiger’s natural habitat.

They may be right; then again, they may not. But there’s little doubt that the most thrilling spectacle you can hope for at Bandhavgarh is one that you can only see from your jeep, when providence sends a tiger stalking magnificently along, or often across the road, fluid orange poetry in motion.

Even years into their profession of pointing out the barking deer or the white-necked crane, Bandhavgarh’s tourist guides turn into excited little boys at the sight of a tiger. That must mean something.

Back at the retreat, which is Churhat Kothi, Bandhavgarh’s biggest and oldest jungle camp, Benegal discusses a million things. So we not only dissect his movies and find out how he marketed Nishant at Cannes (he had Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil walk up and down the promenade in saris and jewellery), but also India’s movement away from Gandhian economics, his lunch with Allen Ginsberg, and the election of Pappu Yadav.

There are two ‘sessions’ daily with Benegal, fuelled by clear conversation and copious cups of tea. There is desultory chitchat on the verandah as evening slides into pitch-dark night. There are nighttime open-air screenings of his films, where we must keep warm with thick blankets and wine and pakoras, chair-bound bundles of humanity staring up at Samar or Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda. There are the subsequent, inevitable dinner debates on the possible hidden meanings in Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda.

And there is the promise of watching tigers the next morning, sitting in a jeep discussing Che and Coppola with Benegal.

Now that’s a safari.