We are rolling through the morning mists on a dirt road in the forest, sunlight angling in as through a cathedral window. Our safari jeep driver slows, and from the passenger seat the guide leans over the door to stare into the roadside dust. He smiles when he sees a print and points back the way we came; the driver swings us around and we head west. Turns out tigers like easy travel as much as anyone and often follow the roads.
Tigers on the road in Bandhavgarh National Park. (GUDKOV ANDREY/Shutterstock)
We four travelers in the back of the jeep look every which way and see all sorts of things: unfamiliar birds; oversized, multicolored Malabar squirrels; tremendous spider webs up in the branches; langurs, black-faced monkeys with tails longer than their bodies staring down at us; all in a rich forest of sturdy teak and exotic Indian ghost trees, with bark mottled green and tan peeling like paper to cinnamon as they turn white in the last weeks of the year.
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