Marie (who is just finishing a two-year French-teaching stint in Mumbai (Bombay) and I ended up drinking a good amount of beer. This is significant, as beer in restaurants is really tough to find in India. Anyway, she had some great insights into the culture which I'll elaborate on later....
When we got back to the hotel, there was a wedding going on in the street. I wasn't exactly sober and did a bit of dancing. I'll just note that it was all about men dancing with men. The idea of men dancing with women (outside the modern, urban areas) in this country is pretty laughable once you get to know it a bit. More on that later to ....
You go through the park in a jeep with a guide. It's hard being in a beautiful place and not being allowed to get out of the jeep, which at least had an open top. But I think the ideas is to keep tourists out of the food chain. Speaking of which -- they don't bait the tigers or anything like that, but they do seem to be able to locate them based generally on their territory and specifically on the warning noises that some of the other animals are making.
I'll note that a day at the park, after you pay the entrance fee, for the jeep, guide and, well, ok, the Elephant ride, was expensive by India standards. About US30.00 And I'll note, while foreigners have to pay something like 500 rs to enter the park, locals only had to pay something like 60. For some people, that's really hard. For some reason it makes a bit of sense to me. Anything goes in India, so why not?
The park was beautiful -- I have to say that seeing all of the animals in their natural habitat was pretty cool. And of course seeing the Tigers in wild was pretty amazing. No reason to write a book about it -- I'll just shut up and here are the pics:
