After a magnificent day in the jungle at Corbett, I had about a 10km bike trip back to my camp. It was approaching dusk, I was feeling good and I was cruising along reflecting in the magic of the day's events. My surroundings were beautiful, the light perfect, everything quite dream like when out of the corner of my eye I could just pick up rapid movement.
Maybe one hundred metres away and barely noticeable because of their jungle camouflage, a group of chital (spotted deer) were sprinting on a parallel to the road I was cycling on. They were going much faster than me, passing at a rapid rate.
Why?!
It was not the time to ponder. There was tiger in the area, we had discovered that earlier in the day. I could not see but I could sense. About fifty chital going like the clappers is a giveaway, a sign only a fool would not heed.
Lance Armstrong would not have beaten me over that last seven kilometres. For all the romanticism and mysticism in our connection to the great cat, the tiger is a stone cold killer and I was bloody terrified...
This was one of the happenings on TigerTek 2003. It was a great adventure including being locked up in a Delhi hospital for a week because they thought I had SARs, trekking to Everest during the 50th anniversary of the great climb by Sir Edmund Hillary and "Tiger" Tenzing Norgay, some magnificent cycling on the Terai and vistiting Namo Buddha, the shrine of sacrifice for a hungry tigress and her cubs. Great times, great people, scary times, scary people, an adventure I will never forget...because it continues to this day.
More soon...
