India, part 9, March 2026

    After eating a bowl of the camps thin porridge, (it would almost be easier to drink it than spoon it up), we head up to load into the vehicles. Paul and I make sure we get in with Ron and Linda as we really enjoy exploring the park with them.

    Once we cross the lake, Paul hustles up to the parking area to find Frankie’s jeep and claim it for the four of us. Once we are all situated in the jeep, we take off to see what we can see, hopefully that will include a sloth bear! Frankie is adamant that we will see a sloth bear on our last day in the park.

    There is plenty of wildlife this morning including gaur, spotted deer, wild boar and a big male blue bull that Paul saw before anyone else did. The blue bull ran off before we could even think of getting any photos.

   After a couple of hours exploring down various roads in the park, Ron decides it is time for a bathroom break. Frankie instructs our driver to take us to the rest stop where we ate breakfast yesterday. Naturally, all of us take advantage of the facilities.

  Once we are back in the vehicle, we leave the restroom grounds and travel a quarter mile or so when we find a jeep parked along the road and its occupants watching something. When we arrive, we see a large sloth bear sniffing around a termite mound at the base of a tree. Get out! The shaggy bear begins to dig next to the tree until he has a hole big enough that he can stick his whole head into it. Frankie says this is normal, but you would think the bear would be eating a lot of dirt along with his buggy breakfast.

    The sloth bear spends several minutes with his head in the hole and then removes his head and begins walking. Two more jeeps have arrived from the opposite direction, and the drivers make sure there is a nice gap between our vehicles and theirs. Sure enough, the bear has no qualms about walking through the space between our jeeps. All of us continue to follow the traveling bear and are able get good looks at him until the lumbering fellow disappears into the trees. Paul, Linda and I laughingly thank Ron for asking for a pitstop because otherwise, we would never have seen the bear!

    Frankie directs our driver to travel to a stream crossing which is in the direction the sloth bear was traveling. Frankie believes the bear might come here as he and other guides have seen this bear walk across a steel dam not far from where vehicles cross the stream. We wait for fifteen minutes give or take, without the bear showing up. It was worth coming here anyway because it is so picturesque.

    Frankie decides to go to another place where the bear is known to frequent. It isn’t long after we arrive that the waddling bear shows up alongside the road. The big bear crosses the road and spends some time smelling through the leaf litter looking for food. After the sloth bear comes up empty, he moves on and out of our sight. Amazing! It is obvious from this experience that the guides in this park and the other parks intimately know the animals and their routines.

    We head back to the rest area for breakfast. Bob, Janet and Joy not only saw a sloth bear, but they also saw a tiger cub! As usual Bob had some fantastic photos of the tiger. I am pretty sure they are the only ones that saw a tiger this morning.

   After breakfast we continue touring the park and see a crocodile, gaur, birds and the first Macaque monkeys that aren’t running away from us. We also hear the story of Frankie’s life. He grew up in an orphanage and of course has no family that he knows of. He still has lots of “family” from his time in the orphanage and they keep in touch with each other. This young man is a great guide, and he should feel so proud of what he has accomplished already in his life after a tough childhood.

    On our return to camp, Paul and I go to the library as the WIFI is much stronger there and get caught up on email and other things. This room is also air conditioned. Too bad we didn’t know to come here before. We go to lunch which is good, but the best part is a decadent chocolate dessert! I get to eat most of Paul’s dessert too, as chocolate isn’t his favorite food.

    We head out for our last drive in Satpura at three this afternoon. Once we drive into the park, Frankie tells us that there had been a tiger not far from the park gate a little while ago but there is no sign of the cat now.

   After touring down a few roads in the park and not seeing much we venture up into a higher plateau. There are a number of vehicles along the road, and it doesn’t take much to deduce that it is either a sloth bear or tiger that has their attention. Our driver can’t get us very close, but Frankie helps us locate a big cub that is laying by a tree. Frankie has found out from the guide grapevine that there are a mother tiger and four cubs here because the tigress made a kill last night.

    As we are watching the cub, its mother walks into view and plops down in a bed of grass. It is not a clear look because of the undergrowth and tall grass between us and the tigress.  After a few minutes another cub, (the cubs are well over a year old I would guess as they are big), appears and goes to greet its mother. Mom gives her offspring a few loving licks after which the cub moves on to join its sibling at the tree.

   Soon a third cub appears walking in from a different direction and heads up to where the other two youngsters are. These two have risen to their feet and are staring off into the distance. When the third cub reaches them they all begin walking in the direction the duo is staring and soon the three cubs disappear into the forest.

    Frankie instructs our driver to move on down the road as he hopes to find the kill. I assume that another guide has informed him where the carcass is. There are a few jeeps parked here and sure enough we soon see what is left of the deer. The rib cage which is stripped of all flesh and the legs are about all that can be seen and then we can only see it with the aid of our binoculars. As I am looking at the carcass I see a tail flip into the air not far away from the devoured deer. Well, it looks like we have found the fourth cub. It is lying flat on its side, with a front and back leg raised in the air. Nothing else of the tiger moves except for the occasional flick of its tail. Eventually he lays flat on the ground and is fast asleep. Unbelievable, we see a family of tigers in the park where we were told it would be tough to see a tiger!

    We drive back towards the tigress, but our driver doesn’t stop when Frankie tells him to. Frankie and the driver start arguing as Frankie wants to stop and observe the female tiger. Whenever we have had a guide and a driver before, the driver just followed the guides instructions. This is pretty uncomfortable and Frankie is really upset. We drive around the park for a while then return to the tiger kill area. We do catch a glimpse of two of the tigers, but they are sleeping off their big meal.

    On our drive back to the lake, we spot a giant squirrel who is at the top of a really tall tree. I can’t keep my head tilted back long enough to take a photo, so I give my camera to Frankie and let him take a photo. We also come upon a blue bull who isn’t near as skittish as the ones we have seen before. We board the speed boat for the last time. I certainly won’t miss walking on the floating dock which was so hard to keep one’s balance on!

    We get back to camp at seven p.m. and say goodbye and thankyou to our great guide, Frankie. After eating supper, we give Allwyn his tip and tell him what a wonderful tour leader he was and how much we enjoyed our time here. When we return to our room, we pack all that we can in preparation for our departure in the morning then go to bed.

    We had a thunderstorm during the night and it is muddy for our trek to the dining room. We leave camp around nine o’clock and as usual the traffic is crazy in some places. We had a couple of close calls causing me to take deep breaths and close my eyes. I will not miss this either! The drive to the airport was about three hours. We had no problems at the airport, but it took a long time to get checked in. Once our plane took off which was an hour late, we arrived in Delhi after an hour flight.

    Once we get to the hotel, we say goodbye to our fellow travelers as many of them are flying back home late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Paul, Joy and I are staying an extra night as we made a mistake when we booked our flights, thinking our tour ended a day later than it did. Oops. Paul and I don’t eat supper and just relax in our room, reading and catching up with Words with Friends.

   We meet Joy for breakfast at seven. Paul and Joy are going on a photo tour of Old Delhi with a professional photographer this morning. I opted out on going on this excursion as I didn’t want to carry my big camera in the mass of people plus, I am just ready to sit around and relax.

   After the siblings leave, I lounge in the courtyard and watch the grounds keepers pick up everything from twigs to dead leaves. Another man is scrubbing down the tables and chairs, while one guy is dipping leaves out of the pool and water garden.

   When it gets too hot, I go into the lobby area and people watch. I keep looking around for a camera crew when a young woman is talking loudly while looking at her phone and gesturing angerly at whoever she is talking to. An older woman keeps trying to grab the phone from her, but she deftly avoids her. A man is pacing anxiously nearby. No one else seems to take any heed of them. Eventually they all walk outside and the show is over.

   I have expected Paul and Joy back at noon. By twelve thirty I am starting to get worried as I really have no way of contacting them. Fifteen minutes later I am pacing the floor and watching every car that pulls up in front of the hotel to see if the people who get out of it are my husband and sister-in-law. One of the people working the desk approaches me and asks me if I am waiting for a car. At that very moment Paul and Joy emerge from the car that just pulled up. I tell the concerned young woman that I am, and it just arrived.

   At lunch I look at the many photos that Paul and Joy took and they are really good. Paul said he learned a lot in the two hours they had with the man that tutored them. I misunderstood that the tour was over at noon, not that they would be back at noon. It took me awhile to calm down as my overactive imagination had too many bad scenarios running through my head! I picked out some of my favorite photos that Paul took on the photography tour.

    Today is our last day in Delhi which is fine with me. I am ready to get home. Joy moves her luggage to our room after we have breakfast as we have to pay to keep a room for the day, no sense in paying for two rooms. The three of us go out to walk in the courtyard and upon walking into the lobby at nine we find our driver for the tour Joy booked waiting for us. Oops, Joy thought he wasn’t coming until ten. A good thing we came back inside when we did. 

   After driving through some heavy traffic, we pick up our guide by a subway stop. Our first visit is to some Muslim ruins. There are beautiful ruins and an astonishing minaret plus a lot of school kids that giggle and wave at us when we walk by them.

   The next stop is to a tomb that looks like a small Taj Majal. Our woman guide waits for us while we walk down for a closer look. Paul opts to climb a bunch of stairs to visit the interior of the tomb, but Joy and I decide seeing the outside is enough for us.

    Our last stop is where Mahatma Ghandi was assassinated. This was my favorite stop on the tour. There were a couple of buildings showing his frugal way of living and little booths depicting the major events in Ghandi’s life. Unlike our other two stops there were very few people visiting which I found surprising for a man that essentially got India out of British rule.

    There are more stops we could make but we have been touring for four hours with all the driving time and we are all tired. We decide to go back to the hotel early. We drop our pleasant guide off and tell her how much we enjoyed the tour.

   We eat lunch then all of us take a short nap before showering and packing. Sandy comes to take us to the airport around seven. We have no problem at the airport; I even get one of the serious soldiers to smile back at me which is usually impossible to do!

    It is a smooth overnight flight, and I believe all of us were able to sleep part of the sixteen-hour flight. When we land in Newark, we say goodbye to Joy since we have different gates for our next flights. When we land in Kansas City, Paul is on the phone with Chuck who directs him to where he is waiting for us. It is great to see Chuck with his welcome home smile for us, we climb into the van and head home. Chuck delivers us home safe and sound and we thank him again for giving up his day to come get us. It was a twenty-eight-hour journey from the time we left the hotel in Delhi to the time we walked into our house.

   A great trip overall but it is always wonderful to come back to the place I love. Nancy