2020 is finally over, YAY! Even though we're looking forward to putting the global events of the past 12 months behind, we have to admit it wasn’t actually a bad year on a personal level. We managed to get married and adopted a sweet kitty (pics at the end), so we did have exciting positive things happen to us even during a global pandemic.
There was however one massive downside to lockdowns – the inability to travel anywhere new and explore the unfamiliar. For people who like to travel as much as we do, staying put for a WHOLE YEAR was a struggle. So while we were reflecting on our failure to complete the challenge of visiting at least one new country every year, we started reminiscing about our past travels.
We’ve been to some amazing places and we wanted to take the unfortunate stalemate of being grounded and turn it into an opportunity to make a record of some the incredible experiences we’ve had around the world. Seems like a good coping mechanism too because it means we’ll go through our photos and relive some pretty cool shit. And since it’s Christmas time (at the time of writing) we’re starting with our first story about the most unusual way we’ve spend this holiday…
Going to India India has always been a country that fascinated us – its rich culture and history, its present day glory as a technological powerhouse and its amazing food had all been the thing of daydreams for quite some time. That combined with having met some amazing people from India made us even more eager to visit. So we decided to plan an exhausting 2 week itinerary and explore as much of the place as we possibly could.
We started as always by booking the flights and later figuring out what to do, how to get a visa and generally what is there to be explored on a more granular level. Gradually our original bold idea of visiting both the North and the South in the space of 12 days gave way to a more reasonable Golden Triangle plan. Reasonable and a bit boring for people who consider themselves to be somewhat adventurous tourists. Since our trip fell over the Christmas holidays we thought we should do something exciting on 24-26 Dec. That’s when Jungle Book memories kicked in along with the realisation that we’re not only going to a place of human-history significance, but also one of the most biologically diverse regions on the planet and the birth place of the most epic cat of all – the tiger. So long story short – we decided to visit a nature reserve during our trip.
Google says the best place to actually see a tiger in India is the Jungle Book jungle itself – Kanha National Park. This park has the largest tiger population in India – the rather depressing number of 83 adult tigers and 40-ish cubs – giving it the highest chance to spot the predator. While I’m sure this would have been an epic trip too, Kanha was a bit far from our main itinerary and it also felt too obvious to go there, so we decided to book a trip to a less popular park and visit Ranthambore. At ‘only’ 430 thousand visitors per year and not being present on page 1 of a Google search, Ranthambore can be considered somewhat off the beaten path. So off we went with no other expectations than to meet a tiger.
We arrived in Jaipur with an early morning flight from Delhi. Off topic – we shared a flight with a bunch of cricket players (we recognized them by the bats they were carrying) and we had one of our many realisations about life outside our bubble – cricket is actually a thing! The confidence with which the guys were walking around was notable and it made us think that being a cricket player must come with a positive social status (and possibly act as a p**sy magnet). This was in stark contrast with our perception of cricket up to that point and a generally dismissive attitude to any sport that’s not football. Note to self – maybe don’t mock cricket as much.
After a short but nerve-wrecking search of our suitcases around the airport we were picked up by our driver who was supposed to take us to the place we were staying in Ranthambore. Being in an airconditioned car with bottled water felt like quite the luxury following a few days of rickshaw trips around Delhi. We travelled in silence absorbing the surrounding area and trying to get a glimpse of the lives of regular people living in the Indian country side. And of course Raya took the opportunity to have a strong nap in the car – one of her favourite ways to spend long car rides.
Arriving at our hotel we quickly threw our bags in the tiger-styled room and went out to visit the Ranthambore fort nearby. When you’ve mostly travelled around Europe you tend to get easily impressed by everything you see that is not Europe-like. But there are things that would be impressive to anyone, however well-travelled, and in my view this was one such place. Situated on a hill, surrounded by 7 levels of walls, huge in size and ridden with monkeys and peacocks the Ranthambore fort was a magnificent sight. As this trip wasn’t in our original plan but was suggested by our driver we assumed we were being taken to see a pile of rubble that would designate where the fort used to be, take a couple of pictures and head back for dinner. Instead we barely made it through all the gates before the sun set and when leaving we were already thinking whether we’d have time to come back.
Here are the things that blew our minds in the fort:
Monkeys! OK, we know there’s monkeys all over the place and if you ask the locals they wouldn’t be as happy about them, but there were SO MANY MONKEYS. Absolutely adorable, in the thousands, with the longest, cute fluffy tails! We couldn’t get enough of them! Raya even touched a baby monkey on the back, which btw is a really, really stupid idea, and she would have gladly given him a hug if he hadn’t been very clear that he didn’t appreciate the affection. Anyway, we kept our distance for the duration of our stay but even so we were able to observe them up close and they were one of the highlights of our entire trip.
Peacocks – in case you didn’t know it, which we didn’t until we saw it, peacocks can fly. Majestic creatures!
The fort – an intricate path going through multiple gates lead to the heart of the fort. Multiple buildings along the way show glimpses of what life used to be like back in the day and paint the picture of the absolutely massive scale of the fort. A not so small town can easily fit in it. There are of course monkeys at every step and at the top there is a small Ganesha temple. The bright coloured structure was built in the 1300s to honour Lord Ganesh for miraculously refilling the fort’s supplies during wartime. A prayer was happening at the time we were there and merchants on the side sold flowers you could use as offering in the temple. Or you know, feed them to the monkeys. Lord Ganesh is the God of Education, so naturally Kiril went inside to pay his respects. Not knowing exactly what he was supposed to be doing, he apparently did alright as he got fed and received a blessing from the priest.
Back in the hotel we had an early dinner and went to bed in preparation for a very early morning to go and see the tigers!
A tiger safari We woke up early the next morning and boarded the open air vehicle. The morning air was crisp, but we were too excited for what lay ahead to be disturbed. We went through a small village on the way to the park and collected the other members of our group. The contrast between the hotels and their surroundings was stark, and so was that between our relatively modern vehicle and the camel drawn carriage we saw being pulled in the streets. We were told tourism money actually helped improve the areas surrounding the park and a new road was being built between two of the villages – a 5km strip that would take 5 years to complete.
Leaving the hustle and the people behind, we entered the park and the animal kingdom. We expected to almost immediately run into at least a few tigers and were rather disappointed to learn that spotting one wasn’t nearly as common as the numerous photos hung around our hotel walls of the owner with various kinds of big cats made it look. We enjoyed the big mob of deer and a few small antelopes, or tiger chocolate as our guide called them, but our hearts had slightly sunk with the realization that the King of the Jungle may not be out and about to greet us.
Up until that point we had never seen a tiger in the wild and weren’t entirely sure how to spot one, but we expected it to be fairly easy. The tiger’s stripes are supposedly there to help it conceal itself while ambushing prey and we had always thought that’s a pretty pointless camo, considering they are bright orange and live among greenery. So from this point on we were jumping at the sight of every different coloured thing in the forest which on a couple of occasions turned out to be just painted rocks.
Our ride gave some hopeful signs – we saw (or our guides did anyway) tiger tracks in the dust and we decided to follow them into a section of the park that we were technically not supposed to go into. This led us through a very, very steep path and I was amazed at the practicality of the jeeps – looking at commercials and expecting it to traverse tough terrain in real life are very different things. Conclusion – surprisingly not all advertisement is exaggerated.
We got a call from fellow trackers who had spotted the tiger and we rushed to the place. There were several other vehicles in the area, all quite close to each other and full of excited tourists with their cameras out. We went really, really close to some tall grass and our guides called it – ‘There she is! The Tiger!’ Looking at the grass field in front of us we couldn’t see anything, so we were certain the tiger had just shown herself and then ran off back among the trees. It was only when she went out of the grass and into the open that we were able to see her. She looked even more magnificent than we had expected!
The first thing that we noticed was how huge she was – and the females are the smaller ones, so it’s difficult to imagine how big a male tiger would be. She rose to more than half the height of the vehicles and was nearly as long. We were warned repeatedly not to attempt to leave the vehicle or to stick anything out – apparently the tigers see the jeep as one uniform unit, which is still larger in size, so they wouldn’t attack. That wouldn’t be the case if they saw a small snack walking around their territory though. I don’t suppose anyone seeing a tiger would actually attempt to go near them – as adorable and fluffy as they look, you can make no mistake they are fierce predators and won’t hesitate to attack if they had the chance. So admiring her from a distance was more than enough.
Remember how we said we expected bright orange? There is a reason they are apex predators and nature has obviously done its job well. The withered grass, the stripes, the colour of the fur – all blended in and I wasn’t even able to spot the grass moving. If we were in the wild we wouldn’t last a day… That aside, the concealment was complete and we were so impressed. Conclusion – unlike commercials, documentaries definitely make things seem different.
Admiring the sight also came with a hint of sadness – the tiger was so comfortable around the vehicles and the noisy people in them, she wasn’t even remotely bothered to walk completely out in the open. Our tiger in the wild didn’t seem so wild and free anymore. And what made us even sadder was that these animals are completely at the human’s mercy. Despite their formidable size and strength, they wouldn’t stand a change if people decided all of a sudden their existence was inconvenient. Don’t want to make this too BBC-like, but seeing first-hand how humans have penetrated every single bit of land and knowing that common sense isn’t what drives us all the time is just plain scary.
Back to the tiger – after a quick stroll among the vehicles she went off in search of her next meal and we all went back to the hotel happy and carrying a little piece of wonder in our hearts. We had another safari later that afternoon and saw a cute black bear and some pretty birds, but unfortunately didn’t get a sight of another big cat.
A Christmas story This day was also Christmas Eve and the hotel had decorated and prepared festive food. The decoration looked comic placed on palm trees and with outside temperatures allowing to comfortably have our dinner in the small yard in front of the restaurant. A special surprise was also prepared for us – a group of dervishes performed traditional music for us while a child was sleeping behind the musicians. What an interesting lifestyle and another wonderful combination of conflicting concepts that is so abundant in India – celebrating a Christian holiday with music from Muslim musicians.
The most interesting thing that night however was chatting to the hotel owner after everyone had gone to bed. An impressively smart person, he told us the story of his family and how he founded the hotel. He was well travelled and had even been to Bulgaria when he was younger so he shared some deep insights on how he saw our culture as a foreigner, how communism had affected us and how positive he was about both our countries’ futures. You wouldn’t expect to have something in common with a culture so seemingly different to your own, but as the conversation unfolded we began realizing that people ultimately have the same values but express them differently. This has been one of the most enriching experiences for us and the main reason we love travelling so much.
Our surprising discovery of that evening was that India also has a tradition of brewing alcohol. A thing we still do in Bulgaria but was outlawed in India a few years before our trip, homemade alcohol is a passion we apparently both have. The owner shared one of his last bottles with us and it tasted surprisingly like rakia but had the distinct flavour of Indian spices infused into it.
The tranquility of the place was something we didn’t expect to experience in India. Having home brewed Indian rakia after exploring a huge ancient fortress was not even a remote possibility. So when we tucked into our beds, being surprised one last time by the hot water bottle that was waiting for us in the sheets we could only be thankful for going out in search of a tiger and having discovered so much more.
P.S. Here is our personal tiger, Kitana:
