We were walking casually, replaying
the events of the past week, ignorant of the goings on around us.
Suddenly about 100 m to our left at the border of the forest and the huge
grassland at Dhikala, mayhem broke loose. There was a loud sound of chital
running, followed by a loud crashing and the loud spine chilling roar of
a tiger. We realised immediately, that we were witnessing one of the most
exiting events of the Indian jungle -- a tiger on his hunt. A small
herd of chital ran out of the forest into the grassland giving alarm calls.
After running for about 50 m they stopped and turned and started looking
in the direction of the forest, all the while giving loud calls.
More calls could be heard from the forest, beyond the area where we expected
the tiger lay. We were barely thirty feet from the chital, but they
were ignoring us completely. We strained our eyes trying to see if
we could get a glimpse of it. For a minute we thought that the tiger might
actually emerge onto the grassland. But it was not to be our lucky
day. After about 5 minutes the chital stopped calling. Noticing us they
began to move away. We had not seen the tiger although it was
probably no more than 100 m away. The silence of the indian jungle
took over once again. We continued our walk to Dhikala.
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Last modified on: Tue Apr 5 15:42:29 2005