Tiger Tiger

Tiger tiger burning bright

Tiger tiger out of sight

Samber, langur warning calls

through the misty morning squalls

Tiger tiger burning bright

Tiger tiger don't take fright

Crouching, pointing guide says "hush

tiger resting in that bush"

Tiger tiger burning bright

Tiger tiger time is tight

searching, seeking, all eyes peeled

fifth safari needs to yield

Tiger tiger burning bright

Tiger tiger behold your might

Languid, muscled fire and tar

swaggering stripes towards our car!

Tiger tiger burning bright

Tiger tiger awesome sight

Humbled, eyeballed froze in fear

A close encounter, ...hugs, a tear

(...I took this and didn't cut the photo!)

　

Breakfast bus to Bandavgarh

The road to Tala from the sleepy train staion town of Umaria winds 30km over ever more forested hills dipping occasionally to cross wide sandy river beds whose shallow waters glisten in the early morning sun.  As I lifted gently from my deep sleep (courtesy of Indian railways being availed of everything but a first class ticket) I noticed that the stilted shelters which stipple the paddy fields of India were taller here, in fact they were six feet taller

...Not ony that, but thorny bushes marked compound boundaries surrounding tightly clustered dwellings and cattle pens of even thicker thorn thatch started to proliferate.  I began to wonder if I had found the part of India where both livestock and humans craved some privacy but in my next breath I counted six men having a morning dump on one patch of open ground so this theory did not hold true.

As we entered Bandavgarh national park, the paddy fields slipped away and the jungle clung to our tarmac strip occasionally yielding to thickets of bamboo or tall grassy meadows where almost immediately I spotted a small antelope cautiously raise its head from the grass ...and cautious every living thing should be here; for my latest destination has the highest population density of tigers in the whole of India!