India - All kinds of wild life-Day 295 (22,474 miles)

“No please, feel free, take our side of the road. We only need this tiny weenie bit! Oh how we laughed!


Either a touch overloaded or he drives like this to save his front tyres wearing out.



Our last extended stop in India was at the Corbett Tiger Reserve. It’s set in lovely countryside and contains lots of different species, but for us like many people it was the hope of seeing the big stripy felines in the wild that took us there.


We had a brilliant guide who could spot and identify the tiniest and best camouflaged animals from miles away sadly neither of us can remember the name of this pretty bird.


Monitor Lizard


Hog Deer


Spot the Croc, he may not be huge but he’s there somewhere.






The wild elephants were beautiful to watch. It was however mating season and hormones were running high, we were charged at by a rather large bull, luckily our driver had quick reactions.


We know it’s a pretty grainy photo and not exactly National Geographic quality but our only tiger sighting was from quite a distance, still it was amazing to see and we sat and watched this big boy for quite a while.


We’re available for Out of Africa 2 (can’t remember, did they both die in the first film?)


We wanted to stay a couple of nights in the reserve and the only accommodation available was the 12 bed dormitory. No problem we thought, it’s only 2 nights, it’ll be fine. Unfortunately the extortionate fees charged to visit and stay in the park obviously are not enough to employ any cleaning staff! Dusty bunks and floor, dirty bed linen and rat droppings in the lockers, oh joy. I chose a bottom bunk and John shoved a plastic bottle in the hole in the wall under the bed which we thought was the rat’s route in.

It was an “eventful” night, we haven’t used overnight trains in India but based on the experiences of others this was pretty similar. Our 12 bunk room ended up with 14 occupants, me, John and 12 young Indian men! Those that couldn’t get a bunk slept on the floor, well I say slept but for most of the night somebody was either talking, getting up, switching the light on, answering their phone or leaving the door open to let the mosquitoes and monkeys in!

As John and I were the first to go to bed I had put on my pyjamas and got into my sleeping bag liner (no way were we using that minging bedding). By the time the rest of the slumber party had arrived I needed the loo and felt a bit self conscious getting out of bed in my pj’s so wriggled into my shirt and trousers inside my bag. I thought I’d done Ok and set off out of the room and across to the toilet block only to hear one of the young men shouting after me “Madam, your sheet!” I had managed to tuck my bag liner into the back of my trousers and had dragged it behind me across the dirty floor and outside through God knows what!

At around 4am having slept for what felt like a total of 10 minutes I thought I felt something tug at my bedding, I was lying on my side facing into the room so could see the floor and was convinced I then saw something rat size run across the floor away from my bed. Maybe I was imagining it, I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.


Some of the boys from our safari sleep over, a nice bunch! While chatting I mentioned that I thought I saw a rat in the night, “yes” said one of them, “I was in the bunk opposite you and I saw it too.” So I’d spent the night with 13 men and a rodent!


Spotless facilities! It got worse, there was a rubbish tip behind the loo’s frequented by the boldest monkeys we’ve met!

Poor John has had a reoccurring tummy bug since SE Asia and he was not feeling good at all. Needless to say we cut our visit short, left that morning for a nice clean guesthouse outside the reserve and wrote a strong letter of complaint!

Next stop Nepal!