Next morning we were on our open topped bus before sunrise. You have to get up early to catch a tiger. There are apparently about 40 tigers at Ranthambore National Park; about one per square kilometer. The guide broke the news gently; it is a bad time of the year to see tigers – he and our driver had not seen one for two weeks. (We read a week later that 18 tigers are now believed to have been poached. Sickening)

We saw this fresh tiger print on the road ½ an hour out. We had a toilet stop at this game keepers camp, and then continued on our way. After driving across a high area for a few kilometers we came to a fork in the road and a jeep full of people waved to us, and sure enough, crossing the road in front of them was the brightest orange tiger you ever saw J

The first picture shows the scene and the second one has been blown up a bit. This was taken like a shot from the hip – we had very little time. The camera was on the smallest picture size (600kb) and there was no zoom used, facing into the sun.

We drove up and saw him (or her?) casually loping of through the scrub. I got more photo’s, but you need some imagination to spot the tiger.

There were heaps of other birds and animals too.