Ranthambore National Park

The next day we set off for Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. It was about a 5-6 hour drive from Agra. We stayed at Pugmark Resorts. It was a lovely resort, actually nicer than Kabini in Nagarhole. Our rooms were large and clean, they had a swimming pool which Rushil completely enjoyed and an ayurvedic massage center which Prasad and I enjoyed. The food was not as good as the food at Kabini though. We had booked the resort through Yatra and that was a bit of a mistake as there was ambiguity on what the package consisted of and we still have not resolved that yet.

Our first safari was on a canter bus at 6:30AM. We were very fortunate to see a tiger on our first run. Maybe it was because it was Diwali that day. The tiger was very accomodating and hung around for quite some time and even allowed one of the other buses to follow it for a few minutes before jumping into the bushes. But as you can see, Prasad was not able to get a great picture of the tiger. That afternoon we went on another safari to a leopard sanctuary. We were not fortunate to see any leopards in the wild but we did get a very good view of a hyena. They had a baby leopard named Lakshmi that was in captivity. The cub was abandoned by its mother as he was limping. They had celebrated his birthday on the day of Diwali by cutting a cake, the park rangers were quite attached to the cub. They were planning on releasing him into the wild sometime in the near future. As we were driving back from the safari, we saw everyone preparing for the Diwali celebrations by lighting their diyas on the front porch.

After dinner, we participated in lighting fire crackers and sparklers at our hotel. Rushil especially enjoyed this part. Sindhura was scared that the embers from the fire crackers would fall on her so she stayed as far away from the big crackers as much as possible.

The next day we could have gone on another safari, but the kids were done with them so we slept in that morning and headed to Jaipur. Being as lucky as we are, on that safari, they saw a tiger, 3 leopards and a crocodile so looks like we missed a good one.

Ranthambore was a good idea as we were able to get away from the city for a few days. The big difference we saw was the Ranthambore was much drier and other than the tigers/leopards, you don't see too many other animals. At Nagarhole, it is much more humid, so the landscaping is more lush and there are lots of animals to see but you don't get to see tigers so easily. I prefer Nagarhole to Ranthambore but I must say, there is nothing like seeing a tiger in the wild.