After the whistle stop tour of Mumbai, it was time to go in search of wildlife. After a short-ish flight, we hit country roads for six hours and then travelled by jeep for the final stretch to reach the edge of the forest in Gujerat.
We arrived, miraculously unscathed. Traffic in India is unbelievable and probably best experienced as a passenger (maybe even as a driver) with eyes closed. Roads outside of the big cities are, at best, just wide enough for two vehicles travelling in opposite directions to pass each other.
There are lorries, cars, overfull buses, bullock driven carts, motorbikes (no-one wears a crash helmet and often families including babies ride pillion), bicycles, tricycles and the ever present cows. Road markings (where they appear), traffic lights and the usual rules of the road are 'optional'. Basically it's a free for all. Road users do as they wish. And that can mean driving head on towards oncoming traffic on single lane roads and holding your nerve, trusting that the driver rapidly closing in you from the opposite direction will lose theirs and veer out of the way at the last minute. Oh, and drivers flash their lights and honk their horns. Constantly.
So, Gujerat, India's westernmost state, with protected forest areas providing a home to a variety of wildlife. Sambhar and spotted deer, langur monkeys, jackals, more than 200 bird species, crocodiles, elusive leopards, snakes and so much more.
A new routine was quickly established. Days beginning before sunrise, being driven by jeep through the forest for five or six hours, returning in the afternoon and staying until dusk, heads turning in all directions, eyes scanning for any movement.
The forest is also home to the Maldharis, the tribal herdsmen and their families who live alongside the wildlife, tending their cattle, occasionally losing some to predators, earning a living from the sale of milk.
But undoubtedly the biggest draw to this part of India is the chance of spotting an Asiatic lion. Smaller than its African relative and hunted almost to extinction, there is currently a small population of several hundred lions living in the forest, the last remaining in the wild, subjects of conservation attempts but still hugely at risk, from disease, from poachers, from tribesmen protecting domestic cattle.
With high hopes and little expectation of seeing any (this wasn't an African safari), patience was rewarded late one afternoon when we were treated to the spectacle of a sleepy lioness and her cub, resting in the shade of the undergrowth.
Did I cry?
Er, do lions poo in the forest?
