Samrat stayed, unmoved. He yawned a bit. His gaze settled somewhere in the middle of our jeep. And then, for a full couple of seconds – which would seem like eternity for all of us seated inside the vehicle – Samrat stared straight.
We froze. Everyone thought that the animal was looking at them.
In that moment when the world seemed to come to a startling halt, someone shouted, “Camera...picture”, after which we came to our senses, to reach to the visual instruments to capture the moment.
Slowly, Samrat started to move away. In a few seconds, he would cross the road and disappear into the bushes...but not before turning back to glance at us.
A tiger at Bandhavgarh | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
He had seen us. At Bandhavgarh, a board with a tiger near the exit gate out reads, “Don’t be disappointed if you do not see me. Because, I have seen you.”
Samrat is one of the 100-plus tigers for whom the muddy lanes of Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh is home. Samrat translates to ‘king’ in Hindi and this massive, male Bengal tiger strolls the Tala and Khitauli zones of the park with carefree abandon.
“Samrat was my first sighting here, so he is special,” Viswajit Singh Solanki, a tour guide tells me about this 8-year-old tiger, “He lives on the hills and is quite elusive.”
We are driving slowly along the muddy lanes of Bandhavgarh, declared a tiger reserve in the year 1993 after being a National Park for a few decades. The state – Madhya Pradesh – itself leads India’s tiger census, with more than 780 tigers spread across its wildlife reserves.
While Bandhavgarh boasts considerable variety in flora and fauna, including the India pitta and crested serpent eagle, the tiger remains the focus. It is home to 164 tigers, according to the last population census, out of which 35 tigers are accessible to tourists in core and buffer zones.
The resort’s lounge area | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
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