Ranthambore National Park is one of the most renowned National parks in India. The park is located in the Sawai Madhopur district of the southeastern Rajasthan and is the famous and former hunting grounds of the Maharajas of Jaipur.
Transport
The nearest station to Ranthambore is Sawai Madhopur. We took the train from Jaipur which took around 4-5 hours and was fairly pain free! Although we did have to stop for around 45 mins due to the tremors felt from the earthquake in Afghanistan.
We took an autorickshaw from the train station which cost 100rs.
Accommodation
We stayed in green hotel.... it was a budget hotel where we had booked a package that included breakfast and dinner. We had heard there wasn't a great deal to do in the local area and were glad that we picked the deal, as it included everything on the menu for breakfast and dinner. The staff were helpful and kind, although they didn't speak English very well. But most importantly the TV in the room had Sony Six, so we could watch the Rugby World Cup.
Safari
Ranthambore park is 10,000 square kilometres and only 1 tenth is open to the public. This park is then split into 10 different zones. It is said on a few websites that zones 1-5 are the ones worth seeing. You can book online, but you must do it early, we didn't book online as we didn't know what dates, we would be there so the hotel was able to sort for us. When you book on the safari you don't know which zone you will be going to until just before as they are randomly allocated an hour or so before.
There are 2 choices of vehicles. The gypsy which is a 6 person jeep which we were offered for 2000rs. Or a Canter which is a 20 seat vehicle at 1,500rs.
We were told that the canter had less chance of spotting the tigers due to the noise of the vehicles so we booked the gypsy for our first safari. However we were told that due to late booking it was impossible to book a gypsy for zone 1-5 as they get booked months in advance. So we thankfully were able to get zone 6.
The 2 other safaris we did were on the canters on zones 1 and 2.
As after our first safari we had spoken to some other lucky people who had seen tigers in the canter the previous afternoon. So our hopes were increased on seeing them in a canter, that afternoon and the following morning. The tigers evaded us for every safari, they were even spotted in the same zones but we missed them.
Plenty of people in the canter and the jeep saw tigers in Ranthambore park, on the same days we were there, but there is a real element of luck, unless you are willing to tip heavily. Apparently if you find the right people and pay the right price, you will end up in the zones tigers had been spotted, but we didn't entertain this option.
Whilst in Ranthambore, we spotted samba deer and spotted deer, an owl in a hole in the tree, and a baby crocodile, but no tigers or leopards.
Good Luck to anybody going in the search for tigers, they are definitely there to be seen, but the luck was not with us.
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| A croc on a rock |
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