Corbett National park

At 2am I expected the town to be as dark as a no moon night, but to my surprise almost all the shops that lined the outside of the bus stand were open and were teeming with activity. As I enquired, I found that most of the town dwellers worked outside and as far as Delhi which was about 230km from there. So the town would be active 24hours a day to support the whole lot of town dwellers traveling in and out. I felt that the time spent from 2 to 6am in the morning, when the park would open, was the longest in the journey. Having got nothing to do but guard my bags and without a jacket to protect my body from the extreme cold outside, it was one of those testing moments. Only solace was the teeming crowd outside on the road. At around 6am, some activity started forming around the park office. Then I came to know some facts about the park from the whole lot of Jeep safari drivers who had come there to take their clients for a ride. The park was opened only at 3 places for the visitors named Dhikola, Bijrani and Jhirna.

Dhikola was the most preferred of them all, forming the core of the jungle and needed a night stay at the park. My tight schedule ruled this option out for me. The next option was Bijrani which was the next preferred for its proximity to the place where passes are issued. That too was fully taken up by advance booking. I was left with the last option, Jhirna. Luckily I got 2 more “nomads” to travel with me to share the safari expenses. We set off to the park at around 7am. I was still shivering in the morning chill and was waiting for the first sun rays to warm me up a bit.

We entered the park at around 7:30am. The park was excellent but the safari option is not amongst the best. In fact jeep safari is by itself eyewash and a wild encounter is as chancy as your luck that day. However we got to see a fresh tiger paw mark - we may have just missed a sighting - who knows

But apart from that fact I enjoyed the moments spent inside the park very much. We saw some spotted dears, sambhars, peacocks, wild elephants etc on the safari. It culminated at around 10am and we reached the bus stand back by around 1015am. I had a light breakfast to get me ready for the grueling bus ride back to Delhi.
I boarded an Uttarkhand State transport (small version) bus. I was told it would reach by around 6pm and that would be good for me to make my way to the railway station at 8:50pm for my journey back to Bangalore. Due to compounded reasons, when it was 6:30pm, I was still some 30-odd kms from Delhi and traffic wasn’t moving an inch. I decided enough is enough and started running across the traffic just to find some option ahead. Luckily two share autos helped me cover some 20 odd kms but took a toll on time and it was 8:20pm and I was still 12kms off the railway station. A local city dweller who took sympathy at my peril and coincidently wanting to travel to the railway station, joined me and helped me get an auto to the railway station. Paying him what he wanted, I asked the auto driver to be as fast as possible and make me reach in time. His driving skill came so useful and I reached the station at exactly 8.50pm in time for the train. Later I discovered that the train was 30mins late. It could be a Murphy law corollary– when one thing gets better, other things won’t be their worst. A huge sigh of relief and the food in the train brought some life back to me stressed soul wandering no less like a nomad.