Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve: The few remaining havens
It was a winter dusk and therefore rather late for the tigress to be still sleeping on a flat rock out in the open.
We assumed she was absorbing the day's remaining warmth from the rock. Sitting atop Sudarshani, one of the well-trained elephants of the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Umaria district of Madhya Pradesh, we were watching the tigress from a distance of a few metres.
Only when she got up and limped away did we realise that she had an injury on her right hind leg around the hock. From her flat belly, the mahout deduced that she had probably not hunted for several days.
The Bandhavgarh National Park derives its name from the most prominent fort of the area. Legend has it that Rama gave this fort to his brother Lakshmana to keep a watch on Lanka, hence the name Bandhavgarh (Sanskrit for brother's fort).
The 2,000-year-old fort, in ruins now, is on a flat-topped hill with rocky slopes as steep as the walls of a fort. Various dynasties are recorded to have ruled from the Bandhavgarh fort. The Kalachuris occupied the fort until the Baghels took it over in the 13th century and ruled their kingdom from there until 1617.
The Baghel king Maharaja Vikramaditya Singh moved his capital to Rewa in 1617, leaving the fort virtually deserted. However, people continued to live here until 1935. The fort was gradually reclaimed by the forest, and today tigers and leopards frequent it along with fauna such as langurs and sambar.
Some blackbuck also survived on the hill until the early 1990s. It is believed that the blackbuck may have been introduced here by the Mughals, since the hilltop does not really have an environment that is suitable for the animal.
Aseem Shrivastava, field director of the tiger reserve, voiced his concern, wondering if she ought to be provisioned with a bait animal so that she did not starve while she recovered from her injury. Early that same morning, Aseem had tranquilised her three-year-old male sibling. This tiger had strayed into an area some 20 kilometres from his natal area in Tala Range and nailed his own fate by killing and partly eating a man. Aseem had joined us after despatching the culprit to the Bhopal Zoo.
The lame tigress, like most tigers in Bandhavgarh, did not seem to be bothered in the least by our following her. As we watched, she sprayed on a bamboo branch and then padded silently through the tree jungle with its scattered patches of bamboo and clumps of grass.
The mahout goaded the elephant to follow her. She was nearing a clump of grass under a dense leafy branch of bamboo when suddenly, and to our utter amazement, she jumped on to the grass like a cat, with her forepaws extended.