Saturday July 5, 2008
Fishing for tiger
By PHILIP GAME
If you don’t spot a tiger in India’s Corbett Tiger Reserve, at least the fish are biting.
Tiger is giving us dodge,” declares wildlife guide Hem Bahuguna, calling a halt near some tell-tale pug marks (pawprints) and scrapings. As the engine cools, then stills, we hear only the birds, the soft breeze and the distant chattering of monkeys. From time to time, another jeep materialises, stopping to exchange a few words. Otherwise, here in India, most crowded of nations, there is perfect peace.
Corbett is India’s first, perhaps finest, Tiger Reserve and is buffered by surrounding tracts of country. You can spend days chasing tigers or cast a line to tempt the golden mahseer. The Ramganga Reservoir provides year-round water for the animals and spawning grounds for the golden mahseer, which migrates upstream.
Tall stands of teak, with its strikingly wide leaves, and the equally imposing sal clothe the hillsides, and wide gravel river beds traverse expanses of waving grass. Gharial, the snouted crocodile, coexist alongside the mugger crocodile and the otter. Sambar, chital or spotted deer and the solitary muntjac or barking deer are all readily spotted, especially when browsing in the grasslands. Less visible, the wild boar, sloth bear and tiger all record their passing with spoor – paw prints and droppings.
The eco-friendly Vanghat River Lodge in the Corbett Tiger Reserve. Panthers, although endangered, continue to be sighted in the hill country – but, Bahuguna admits gloomily, Indian authorities have recently confiscated quantities of contraband skins.
Macaques or rhesus monkeys, the males’ buttocks comically inflamed during the present mating season, together with the larger langurs, enliven otherwise still forests.
At least, 500 of India’s 1,300 known bird species are recorded at Corbett: a hoopoe browses boldly; a lone rose-winged parakeet stands out against bare boughs.
Bahaguna has set up a pre-dawn rendezvous at Amdanda Gate, outside the town of Ramnagar. A pallid pink orb begins to burn through the mists which rise above forest and grassland as the jeep reaches Bijrani camp, where day-visitor facilities operate.
By noon, we have jolted across innumerable gravel river beds, wound up into the dappled shade of sal forest and back down again, and climbed a watchtower on the edge of a broad river valley. We have examined the bark torn and chewed by elephants, noting the bushes trampled by these huge and demanding creatures. Tiger pug marks and droppings beside the track indicate the age and health of the animal.
Tigers often prove elusive, but park director Rajiv Bhartari will explain why this is no cause for concern. At Corbett, an estimated 143 tigers range across 1,218 square kilometres of rugged terrain. This population density is considerably lower – and therefore healthier – than at some of the better-known reserves in western India.
Villagers in the community established by celebrated tiger hunter Jim Corbett. Scientists are conducting a tiger census, and the numbers are coming in well above expectations.
Jim Corbett, author of the best-selling Man-Eaters of Kumaon, became a larger-than-life figure in the Himalayan hill country before World War II. The British hunter tracked down and killed 50 man-eating tigers and more than 250 leopards which had terrorised local villagers, but believed that a taste for human flesh was developed only by ageing or wounded tigers. His concern for the tiger’s survival led to the reservation of what would become today’s Corbett National Park: the starting point in 1973 for the groundbreaking Project Tiger.
The hill people of Kumaon remember Jim Corbett not only by the reservations which bear his name, but for his dedication to the welfare of his tenant farmers for whom he created a model village at Kaladhungi. Choti Haldwani, Corbett’s bungalow where the life-long bachelor lived with his sister Maggie, has been preserved as a museum, whilst a walking trail meanders through the mustard seed and sugar canefields of his former estate.
One last chance to spot the elusive tiger?
We step off the highway into the silent forest, following a foot track down into the valley of the Ramganga.
Tiger’s pug or pawprint indicates the age and health of the animal. We glimpse a lone sambar deer, more timid than the chital; the canine bark of the barking deer reaches us from a bend ahead. Porcupines and wild boar have dug up the ground in many places. Tiger scat, examined by expert eyes, reveals fur and crushed bones from its last kill: that is as close as I’ll come to a face-to-face encounter with the king of the forests. Tiger hunting has long since ceased, but the ‘king of Indian sport fish’ still draws anglers from around the world. Esteemed by pukka sahib sportsmen since the nineteenth century, the yellowfin or golden mahseer remains abundant here; catches are released.
At a once-abandoned hamlet on the river flat, ecologist Sumantha Ghosh, in partnership with local communities and tour operator Wild World India, has established Vanghat River Lodge, a wilderness and fishing lodge just outside the reserve.
Vanghat trains and employs young villagers as housekeeping staff and gillies. Poaching and dynamite fishing have virtually ceased, and catch sizes are rising noticeably. The hamlets and their garden beds are shielded by solar-powered electric fencing, for protection from predatory leopards, browsing elephants – and the occasional tiger.
Vanghat’s stone and mud-brick cottages have been fitted with comfortable beds and ensuite bathrooms: far more welcoming than India’s scruffy government resthouses. Drinks are offered around the campfire before dinner materialises.
Barry Abbott, a retired Briton who has fished all over the world, declares himself well pleased with his first day’s tally: a 15lb mahseer, with a 25-pounder slipping off the hook. My own catch is considerably less impressive, but the intangible rewards include a glimpse of two very large otters slithering across the river-worn pebbles.
Project Tiger
A jeep safari is a good way to see the sights. One hundred years ago, India’s tigers numbered around 40,000, yet within decades the Royal Bengal Tiger faced extinction. Although hunting was outlawed in 1970, the survival of the species was threatened by continuing loss of habitat and by poaching.
Enacting the Wildlife Protection Act in 1972, India’s central government established the first nine tiger reserves, including Corbett and totalling 16,000sq km, across India.
Reserves now number 27 and encompass more than twice that initial land area.
Project Tiger has doubled India’s tiger population whilst safeguarding much of the gene pool and habitats for wildlife generally, although some argue that some smaller reserves are not viable populations.
As at Corbett, Tiger Reserves consist of a core, a heartland shielded from forestry, grazing and other disturbances. Buffer zones supplement the habitat and allow multiple uses, including pre-existing villages and forestry operations.
Project Tiger http://projecttiger.nic.in
Fact File
Corbett National Park is six hours drive east of Delhi. Overnight trains also serve Ramnagar, which offers a range of accommodation including the comfortable but bizarrely designed Country Inn Tree Tops, one of many hotels along the Ranikhet road.
Corbett Museum is 32 km from Ramnagar on the road to Nainital.
Vanghat River Lodge www.wildworldindia.com
Malaysian Airlines operates daily non-stop services to Delhi. All visitors to India require a visa, usually valid for six months. Foreign currency exceeding US$1000 is supposed to be declared on arrival. Be sure to re-convert Rupees before leaving India. Anyone suffering respiratory ailments should be aware that many Indian cities are highly polluted.
More information: Lonely Planet’s encyclopaedic India guide.
Uttarakhand Tourism http://gov.ua.nic.in/uttaranchaltourism/corbett.html and the state-owned tourism company Kumaon Mandal Vigas Nigam Ltd www.kmvn.org
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