The Armchair Traveller

As I have been sick this week I haven’t had much of a chance to really get stuck in there for this weeks travel email. But I did come across this gem of an article that makes an Elephant Safari in India sound like just what the doctor ordered if you ever feel the need to visit India – it is something to do in India that I have never really thought about! I think this will definitely go on my ever growing list of places I want to visit and things I want to do! Very cool. Enjoy.

On Top Of The World In India
13/10/2006 02:59 PM, Air New Zealand Magazine

The photographer nearly dropped his camera. Above the din of Delhi traffic I heard: “Elephant. There was an elephant back there in the middle of the road.” I scrambled to peer through the plastic window in the back of the rickshaw.

There, standing on the median strip, richly painted and adorned with every manner of accessory, was an elephant, no doubt on its way to a wedding, where a gussied-up pachyderm is an essential, fortune-attracting attendee in India.

It wasn’t an enormous beast, but it wasn’t particularly small either. Which raised the question: if I had that much trouble seeing an elephant in the middle of the street, what chance did I have of spotting a tiger in the middle of the jungle?

This was a concern because the next day we were off on an elephant safari to Corbett Tiger Reserve, in the northern Indian state of Uttaranchal, where we would see a variety of beasts and birds, including, possibly a tiger. There are reported to be about 130 of this grievously endangered species in the reserve’s 1288 square kilometres, although some estimates place the figure much lower.

The reserve reaches to the foothills of the Himalayas and contains, among other areas, Corbett National Park, the first national park in India and the third in the world, where we would be spending much of our time. While the tigers are the big-ticket attraction, it is also home to many other unique and often endangered mammals and some 600 species of birds, which is more than in all of Europe.

The Legend Of Jim Corbett
The park is named in honour of Jim Corbett, an Indian-born Anglo who reportedly shot his first leopard when he was eight. After taking part in a particularly bloody bird shoot he lost his enthusiasm for hunting for its own sake, but his skill meant he was much in demand to track down and eradicate tigers that attacked humans.

When he dispatched the Campawat maneater, for instance, he ended a feline feeding frenzy that had left 436 people dead. Corbett knew his tigers. He once lured a killer to its death by imitating the mating call of a female. However, as he grew older, the conservationist won out over the hunter and Corbett became increasingly interested in finding ways to save the tiger.

Not an easy task, as such hunting had been sport in India for centuries. He campaigned long and hard for the establishment of this park, which was founded in 1936 and renamed in his honour in 1956, shortly after his death.

Our excursion into this area would be considerably less life-threatening than Corbett’s tiger hunts. And the emphasis would be on seeing all kinds of wildlife, not just killer cats.

This takes some organising. No one is allowed in without a guide. And you don’t just bowl up to Jumbos-R-Us and rent an elephant by the day. We were in the custody of Pavan Puri, who, through Tigerland Safaris, has been organising customised and comfortable expeditions in this area for 20 years.

We had arranged to spend six days in various parts of the reserve. Two would be entirely on elephant, the rest by combination of elephant and jeep. Given the animals have a top speed of two to three kilometres an hour, we wouldn’t have seen much of the park without the supplementary vehicle.

Everything about elephants is slow – they take more than two years to gestate and many more to train. But they are long-lived, reaching ages of up to 80, and only leave this incarnation when the final of the four sets of teeth they grow in their lives wears out and they can no longer feed themselves.

Our visit started at the Corbett Hideaway, a riverside complex on the fringes of tiger country. With its choice of buffet and grill meal options, on-site ayurvedic spa and cabin accommodation, it’s more like a Pacific island resort than an establishment in a remote region of India.

Many visitors make this their start and finish point, opting to complement the wildlife experience with a small dose of luxury. After a taster afternoon drive through the nearby reserve entrance at Bijrani in which we saw wild monkeys, deer and numerous birds within the first hour, we were more than ready to meet our elephants and get going the next morning.

Travel Elephant Style
To understand elephants in India you have to know about the god Ganesh, who, despite the name, is not the deity responsible for parsley sprigs and tomatoes cut into decorative shapes. He is the son of Shiva and associated with wisdom, which makes sense as there aren’t many brows higher than an elephant’s.

Ours were named Lakshmi (goddess of prosperity) and Jumpur Rani (queen of flowers). The former was younger by some 20 years but was the dominant one of the pair.

Elephants are – as a rule – gentle, sociable creatures. At first meeting, Lakshmi inspected me with her trunk. She might have been registering my scent, which is how they identify people. She was definitely interested in the large lump of sugar I had for her.

The mahouts (drivers) mount their beasts by placing a foot on the end of their trunk. The elephant then deftly raises them onto their heads, from which they take their seats. We get a ladder, a triumph of practicality over dignity.

The job of mahout is passed down through families. Some drive their elephants with a combination of verbal commands – malagat (go), chaee (turn), hat (stop) – and prods on the back of the head with their foot. Others dispense with the commands and communicate entirely through feet and knees.

Elephants have more than a few behavioural quirks, nearly all of them endearing. They dislike, for instance, to be out of sight of each other. So when Lakshmi disappeared around a corner on the winding trail, Jumpur would unleash a mighty trumpet call – and you haven’t heard an elephant trumpet until you’ve heard it from on top of the elephant – and ramp up her speed to probably about four kilometres an hour to catch up.

They also produce a rumbling sound, which seems to let each other know where they are.And while we’re on noises, in their less godly aspect, Indian elephants, like other living creatures, have a digestive system. Suffice to say, its workings are in proportion to their size.

If there’s one thing any mahout can’t control, it’s the elephant’s appetite. They need to get through at least 100kg of vegetation a day, just to fuel themselves. They’re picky, too – just three types of vegetation in this area appeal, especially bamboo.

A corollary of this need for constant feeding, which can occupy up to 18 hours of their day, is that it doesn’t leave much time for sleep, and most get by on about four hours a night. Riding an elephant – especially on your own, which our guides soon had us doing – is a strange combination of incredibly exciting and remarkably relaxing.

The excitement comes from looking down and realising, well, you’re riding an elephant in the middle of a jungle where there might be tigers. Yet its gentle swaying movement as it carries you through these cool leafy trails, to the accompaniment of bird song, could easily lull you to sleep.

Australasia Meets India
The first impression of the landscape is how familiar it feels, like a combination of New Zealand and Australian bush – rich flora like New Zealand’s, right down to the shades of green, but growing tall and thin like Australia’s.

The river Ramganga runs through here. In the monsoon season it’s as mighty as torrents get, but in January it has dried up for vast stretches. Again, New Zealanders will be reminded of South Island river beds in our dry season.

Tall spindly sala trees account for 60 percent of the vegetation. They are known widely outside India, because it was in a grove of sala trees that Buddha died. Also common were the distinctive crocodile bark trees, whose skin is used to make corks.

Less familiar were the vast savannahs that provide shelter for the shyer creatures. And where a panorama was visible, one of the most noticeable features was the haze that seemed to mantle everything in the late afternoon. This is the result of the high amount of dew that forms overnight – the winter sun can’t evaporate it until late in the day.

Take A Step Back In Time
Centuries ago – and as late as last century – we might have been engaging in a very different sort of safari. Hunting tigers on elephant is as old as the maharajahs, for whom it was a favourite sport and one to which the British took with enthusiasm. They are responsible for the rest houses in which we spent two nights on the trail. These are sturdy concrete buildings, with only basic facilities, in which hunting parties would rest up overnight.

For a reminder that this was a step back in time, one only had to look at the books in a glass-fronted case in Lohachaur rest house, built 1908-09. Here was a copy of The Diva’s Ruby, published 1912, bearing the inscription: “Property of Kalagarh Forest Division”.

The idea being that you took a book from one rest house and finished it before the next, where you would leave it for someone else to enjoy. I don’t know how comfortable the original hunters were, but I suspect it was just a variation on the treatment we received: a full three-course meal prepared apparently out of nothing in near darkness (“Indian cooks don’t need eyes, they just need a nose,” noted Pavan) and served by a waiter who remained at ease throughout the meal to attend to every need.

There was no power, but there were lanterns and candles. Water was heated on a fire and brought to our rooms for washing. And while you’re not looking, a hot water bottle is slipped into your bed to take the edge off the chill when you finally go to sleep. It was winter and cold.

I was so cold I forgot I had packed sleepwear, which is odd, because ‘pyjamas’ is originally an Indian word – along with ‘bungalow’, ‘pariah’ and ‘cummerbund’. At this temperature, at this altitude, nothing could be done about the condensation that forms inside overnight. A drop of dew on my forehead woke me up next morning at 6.30am.

Searching For Himalayan Views
By the time I rose, the breakfast table was already set. We continued down the mountain and followed a river through a valley where we stopped for lunch. Across the water lay a small village. Birds abounded: the common kingfisher, a brilliant dash of turquoise and orange, which is apparently not that common, swallows, martins and crow pheasant, among others, darted back and forth. It was like being at an avian intersection at rush hour – or thrush hour.

Our group soon drew a crowd of curious local children who were much like kids everywhere. There were two teenaged boys who decided this was the moment they had to wash their motorbike in the river. Nearby lurked uncertain toddlers and giggling girls. When one of the party who was unwell stretched out in the sun to sleep, the boys sat in orderly lines to observe him.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking these are unsophisticated youngsters. Enquiries revealed that, somewhere around here, in what felt like close to the middle of nowhere, they were studying subjects like electrical engineering and information technology, future economic warriors of their country.

Not that ancient beliefs have been forgotten. A troupe of some 20 followed us as we left the area. They would scoop up dirt from the elephants’ footsteps and rub it on their foreheads, reserving some to take home and place on shrines to Ganesh – an acknowledgement of the respect in which the elephant god is still held.

Leaving the village and its children far behind us, we came to the point where we were to farewell our elephants. Jeeps would take us the rest of the way. The occasion remained on the acceptable side of maudlin. Just. The next night, we stayed at a slightly more auspicious rest house, at Khanda, the park’s highest point, near where Jim Corbett shot one of his more notorious maneaters.

The view was clear to the Himalayas. Not long after our arrival, as darkness fell, a barking deer started to sound its warning. These deer are the size of large dogs and make exactly the same sound. They are nimble creatures that seem to slide, rather than run, along the hillsides. When alarmed by predators, they make their unique call which also warns other animals away.

It was at least an hour before it stopped, so there was certainly something prowling out in the night. Exploiting the early rising rights of the middle-aged, I was up at 5am to take in the northern hemisphere stars.

A member of our group had managed to teach me where Orion was the night before, though, of course, it wasn’t where I had left it by next morning. Instead I merely gazed in awe at the canopy of shimmering light formed by the stars, far from the obliterating effects of urban illumination. In the northwest, a satellite blinked.

Within an hour the sun had set fire to the tops of the Himalayas and, back on earth, as far as could be seen, thick mist formed a sea from which the small hilltops surrounding us protruded like so many islands.

Our journey the next day would take us to Dhikala Forest Lodge, one of the park’s main visitor centres. We rode the jeeps down what was obviously a little-used track, as vegetation covered much of it, although here and there animal prints were visible.

Rivers crisscross back and forth through the park. Outside the monsoon season they are traversed by temporary bridges made of planks that are dismantled before the rains come and re-erected later. Some are better made than others.

As we approached Dhikala we were held up by a tractor towing a trailer-load of shingle that had been too heavy, and had broken through the bridge and got stuck. As several men stood around indulging in the internationally recognised practice of head scratching and arguing about how to solve the problem, I realised we were seeing a rare case of not enough chiefs and too many Indians.

Eventually, one of the number unhooked the tractor, drove it across the river and attached it to the trailer’s other side, from which he was able to tow it out. Later that night we saw the same vehicle in similar straits at the lodge, where it has having more than a little difficulty with some backing. We were glad that local elephant driving skills were more developed than their tractor-driving equivalents.

Monkeying Around
Dhikala Forest Lodge is a large complex from which numerous elephant safaris depart. It has excellent accommodation and food, and the air of an institution that is in the process of being transformed into something even bigger and better. Rhesus monkeys thrive in the grounds. Amusing though their antics are, they keep their distance and you should keep yours.

Watching one steal a sugar bowl and consume its contents is funny, but not if it’s your sugar bowl. And they will defend their sugar bowls vigorously. There was no shortage of animal sightings during six days in the park. As well as the barkers, Corbett contains three other types of deer: hog deer (somewhat elusive and mysterious), sambar deer (the largest, with Mickey Mouse ears) and spotted, by far the most common, popular tiger food and total Bambis in appearance.

The spotted deer have a mutually satisfactory arrangement with the black-faced monkeys, who are also abundant and are often found in close proximity. As they leap from branch to branch, the monkeys shake down leaves from the trees for the deer to eat. For their part, if their super-sensitive noses detect a predator, the deer sound the alarm to let the monkeys know danger is near.

Among other species we sighted were the rare gharial or fish-eating crocodile, with its unique bulbous nose. From a high vantage point we could see two sunning themselves, while in the clear water next to them a large school of catfish floated, unwittingly waiting to be had for dinner.

As we made our way back from this, Pavan stopped the jeep. Following his eyeline we could soon make out what had caught his attention. Not far away in the forest, a troupe of wild elephants was feeding. Parents and a calf were making the most of vegetation from a tree that the bigger members of the herd had brought down for lunch.

Elsewhere in a tableau that couldn’t have been better stage managed, two sambar deer rested on a riverbank while a vulture sat nearby, presumably waiting for them to die of old age. To complete the picture, five otters sported in the water, chasing each other on and off rocks.

If you come to Corbett expecting to see a tiger, you may well be disappointed. If you come without such hopes, you may well get a pleasant surprise. Either way, you will have had one of the most remarkable wildlife experiences it is possible to have.

Find this item at: http://xtramsn.co.nz/travel/0,,12734-5608241,00.html ©2006 Xtra Limited

PS Kirsty it could be another Safari option for you if you didn’t want to go to Africa!

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