INDIA 2025: RATHAMBORE NATIONAL PARK DAY 3, FINAL SAFARI DRIVE

 November 29, 2025

We are on our last day in Ranthambore National Park and our last safari drive before beginning the long drive back to Delhi followed by the very long flight home. We get our usual early start.

Just to show what bird watching is like for those without a large lens, I have included a few actual/cropped shot pairings below. A lot of times I can see a speck and just aim and click, hoping that something will show up in my enlarged photo. Full disclosure: I have touched up some of the close-ups with AI.

Brown fish owl:

Black-winged kite:

This flock of peacocks is unmistakable. It is fun to see so many at one time.

The great egret is also easy to spot and identify because of its location.

This crested serpent eagle hiding behind bare branches is a little more difficult to identify.

Suddenly, our guide gets very agitated and our driver starts acting like he has just joined the Indy 500. It can only mean one thing. A TIGER!

Our driver is pointing and yelling, so although I can't see anything, I take a picture with my phone. Pinching out and zooming in, I see it. Maybe.

We are not the first vehicle in the queue, but we have one of the more aggressive drivers, and he throws all caution to the wind, revs his engine, heads off the road up rocky inclines and ravines, and maneuvers into a more favorable position. 

As the Bengal tigress emerges from the trees and begins a sauntering walk towards us, voices and engines quiet and all we hear above a few whispers are hundreds of camera clicks. Our guide lets us know that this is nine-year-old Siddhi, the most dominant tigress in Ranthambore. We learn later that she has been in a territorial battle with her sister Riddhi, who has since been moved to another national park.

See my first video of Siddhi here, which I shot vertically, meaning that I can't embed it in this post and you will have to click on the link. The awed "Wow!" you hear is Bob's reverent exclamation.

Siddhi clearly owns the territory. She doesn't even look at us as she passes by, nor does she change her gait. She is Large And In Charge. Friends and family have asked us if we were scared a tiger might attack us. As Bob pointed out, from the time tiger cubs are born, the tigers in the park are followed by paparazzi, and they soon learn that the photographers pose no threat and have no food for them. Why bother taking a look at us? The tigress walk is the equivalent of passing someone with your nose in the air.

By the time I think to film a regular horizontal movie, Siddhi is already past us, her powerful body sashaying gracefully into the trees. She stops only to mark her territory with her back paws and then for a momentary neck-scratch on a rough tree trunk.

We watch Siddhi until she disappears. Everyone is content--not just those in our jeep, but the star-struck tourists in the other vehicles as well. No one takes off after her for another look. Apparently, that is not proper tiger-viewing etiquette.

And yes, after those few moments, everything else is anti-climatic. Once you've seen a tiger, what else is there to see?

Even the daring treepie that lands on our windshield does not disturb our tiger reverie.

But when he shoos the bird away, I notice that our driver also finds the tigers mesmerising. He has tattooed their distinct four-toed paw on his hand.

My last animal sighting is of a crested serpent eagle. Cool, but not a tigress.

It is finally time to go home. Alvida, India. It has been an amazing two visits, but I think I have had my fill of looking for tigers.

READING

I ran across All the Way to the Tigers by Mary Morris after I had read another of her books, The Red House, about the treatment of Jews during World War II in Italy. Out of curiosity, I looked to see if she had written any other books and discovered this memoir of her own quest to see a tiger in India in 2011. The book opens with this: "We haven't moved in what seems like hours. . . .  Our jeep is at a crossroads where my driver and I sit in silence. Ajay is listening. His eyes dart, skimming the woods, but mainly he listens. I am listening too, although I am not sure what I am supposed to hear. . . . A jackal bursts from the brush and crosses our path, but the tiger eludes us. It is the tiger everyone comes to see, not the snake-eating hawk, the spotted deer, the wild boar--it's all about the tiger."

Yes, that is exactly what a tiger safari is like. If you are planning a tiger-hunting trip to India, or if you are just recently returned, this is a great read.