Ranthambore Tigers

On Monday we journeyed to Ranthambore to visit some NGO's that work on conserving the forest and tiger population in the area. Ranthambore was India's first national park if I remember correctly (started by Indra Gandhi) and their main industry is tiger tourism. This was immediately evident when we entered the town. All of a sudden hotels lined the roads and there were tons of advertisements for safaris. Immediately after we got to our hotel, we were carted off on our very own tiger safari. Our group split up in to two cars, and my car broke down. The second safari I've been on in the past year, and the car I'm in breaks down for the second time. In Tanzania it was a flat tire, this time it was something with the engine. Since that's not as fixable and it was at the beginning of our adventure, we waited for another car to be brought and switched vehicles. The safari itself was interesting....our guide stopped the car for every deer we saw, but sped right past the peacocks and monkeys - you know, the things we don't have in America. Some other highlights include two crocodiles sunning themselves, a mongoose scurrying around the path, and a kingfisher bird. Oh, and a tiger. That's right, we saw ourselves a tiger. It was at the very end of the safari...all of a sudden our car kicked it in to high gear and we sped towards an undisclosed location. Soon enough, we came across about 8 other safari cars all piled up and everyone inside trying to get pictures of what looked like some intense foliage. Behind the leaves and branches there was indeed a tiger. He was lying down and kept bobbing his head up and down. At one point he rolled over and stuck his paws up in the air. Cute. Unfortunately the shrubbery was too thick for me to get a picture, but I swear it actually happened. I think someone else might've gotten one so I'll try to track that down as evidence. Anyway after fully immersing ourselves in the pileup we sped our way out of the park and back to our hotel, where we were given one bottle of beer each after dinner. Minus the 2-3 someone saw a hotel staff member walk away with. Oh, India.
On Tuesday we visited with the Prakartik Society - an NGO that works on developing the communities around the reserve so that they're less dependent on the forest. They've built an amazing school that a lot of the children attend on scholarship/for free and emphasize environmentalism and saving the tigers. While we were touring the school we met Jim & Sue, a retired British couple that comes to the school for 4 months at a time to give individualized tutoring to the students. When they're back in the UK they do a lot of fundraising on behalf of the school. They seemed like such a cool retired couple - I want to be them when I'm older. As opposed to the other schools we saw in Bikaner, I felt really inspired by this school and what Prakartik was doing for the students. It seemed to be a really well run institution and everyone involved was very invested in making the school succeed. Their first class of students is in the 10th Standard right now, but the school is equipped to have students up until the 12th Standard. There are science labs and other classrooms equipped & waiting for the students to be old enough to use them. Afterwards we drove out to a rural village that has Prakartik-initaited programs in place: biogas systems (taking cow patties and transforming them in to gas) for cooking and lighting and aforestation initiatives. Though this part of the day was really interesting, it was also really hot out and I was dressed in all black, so I lost steam really quickly. They receive money from J.P. Morgan's climate change fund for the biogas programs - I thought this was really interesting, especially because when we were in Bikaner we found out that Merrill Lynch donates money to the URMUL trust. I never thought I would encounter either of those firms in rural India but such is globalization.
That afternoon we visited the hospital Prakartik built in the area as well. There was a ton of art in the lobby that emphasized/promoted the fact that the people of Ranthambore are dependent on the tiger population being alive and thriving. The hospital itself was definitely not up to American standards in terms of cleanliness and privacy issues, but we were told it was way better than a government hospital. I'll take their word on that one. At one point we walked in to the delivery waiting room in the maternity ward. We had previously been told that all the doctors were gone for the day and in my mind I associated that with us not encountering any patients either. However, to our left was a curtain drawn. Someone asked what was behind it and our guide goes, "oh, there is a woman in labor." Uh, why would you let 22 college kids who had spent the morning with a whole bunch of cow dung in to your maternity ward? Oh, India.
The next morning we met with the Tiger Watch, Parkartik's sister NGO that works on the forest conservation side of things, including anti-poaching initiatives, habitat restoration, and community awareness. They started their presentation off by saying that people and nature walk hand-in-hand, but I don't think they followed through on that statement, considering that they called the indigenous community in the area, the Mogya, secretive, semi-nomadic, cold-blooded killers because they poach the tigers. This was definitely an instance of new colonialism - the people in the position of least power are being made to pay for society at large's destruction of the forest. It's so much easier to make these villagers move and change their lifestyle than going in to say Jaipur and making our host families drastically change their consumption patterns. Because the Mogya are poaching the tigers it's a lot easier to point a finger of blame at them rather than acknowledge the fact that the tiger reserve was once the private hunting grounds of the royal family of Jaipur.
As a whole though, I really enjoyed the excursion. It definitely had a summer camp-y feel to it for some reason, I think because it's been getting way warmer out. On Wednesday night we went to a much nicer resort for dinner. It's owned by a cousin of Ramaji, our homestay coordinator (also a cousin of my host sister because she & Ramaji are cousins), and as an elephant on the property. It was a part of his wife's dowry, and we got to meet her. And pet her. It was SO cool. He said that she's been in the family for 60-something years. Also there was pasta for dinner. Enough said.