We left Mussourie hideously early in the morning on a rickety old bus. The driver took advantage of the early morning lack of traffic to whiz down the hill and around the curves at a speed my stomach and inner ear did not agree with. In the early afternoon, much road-side food and many near-traffic accidents later, we arrived in Ramnagar, the nearest town to Jim Corbett National Park, one of the best known national parks and tiger preserves in India.
The days of our visit were the first two days of the park's open season, and at first it seemed that we would not be able to get entry permits due to the park’s popularity. But after hanging around the office for an entire morning and speaking with numerous officials, we finally triumphed over bureaucracy and got a 2-day, overnight permit to the Bijrani zone of the park. Our morning was enlivened by the presence of a protest at the park headquarters. Just a few days before, a tiger had killed a woman from a nearby village who was gathering wood in the outskirts of the park. About 50 villagers were staging a sit-in to demand compensation and increased protection. Tigers are a huge draw for tourists and a source of income for local people, but this was an important reminder that people are still killed by tigers every year and that human-wildlife conflict is an important issue in India.
We finally got our permits and headed into the park in a jeep with a guide and another couple we met in the park offices. During our two days in Corbett we saw all manner of beasties, including barking deer (or Muntjac, Muntiacus muntjak), spotted deer (chital, Axis axis), and sambar deer (Rusa unicolor). Also seen where wild peacock, hoopoe birds, and languor monkeys, and the big two, the Asian elephant and two tigers! We were very lucky to see the tigers - they are rather rare and many people spend days in the park without seeing any. For us, it just took a bit of patience and some luck. Our mandatory guide was not much help though - of the two tigers we spotted, I saw the first one and R. found the second!
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