Now here is an interesting way to celebrate being fifty something. Take a walk on the wild side! I have been meaning to celebrate my fiftieth birthday in style for two years now.
It seemed that if I didn’t get down to planning some special point in my memory indicating that I was in my fifties, they would flash past me in the kind of rush that my twenties and thirties did. O and yes the forties! I almost forgot about them!
While I don’t have anything against parties as a celebratory rite of passage, for someone who moves around as I do birthdays are also a marker-point in the calendar of my life.
As I enter into my old crone years, I am about building up the memory banks, of storing memories in the treasure chest of my mind so I can pull them out when I am sitting in a wheel chair with my cardigan on inside out and examine the course of my life through all these heart-stopping memories.
I took myself off to the Corbett National Park with the plan of meeting a tiger or a leopard. Despite the critical situation of the Tiger population in India, currently less than 1200 in the entire country, Corbett Park claims to have 240 of those rare and dignified cats within the confines of their 525 square kilometre park.
I began the trip with high expectations of seeing only one species, the solitary and endangered gentlemen of the jungle, the Royal Bengali Tiger. Instead Mother Nature reached out and grabbed me by the senses, and in doing so awoke me to the celebration of nature going on around me.
The sweet lemony smell of curry leaves crushed by the feet of an elephant invaded my brain on the first evening safari into the forest and the days that followed flowed like the water of the rivers that surround the park. Corbett National Park holds an amazing variety of wildlife, from huge pythons to cute little otters, gentle quaking chital deer and rare vultures, sloth bears and elephants and insects too various to mention. The waterways hold a rich variety of fish and crocodiles and the forest is alive with birdsong.
As we track through the park each day a different face is revealed to us. One morning we come across a group of elephants with these young, who very generously let us photograph from a distance before crashing off into the jungle.
Riverine Woods Resort, located deep in the beating heart of Jim Corbett National Park, is a word within a world and away from the world at the same time.
Jumping a jeep from the Tiger Camp, we were driven through pristine jungle to the where the road curved off the main highway and onto a riverbank dotted with exclusive resorts. Pausing only to throw the vehicle into four-wheel drive, the driver plunges the jeep into the river and we head off even further into the jungle.
Finally, a wooden bridge and the waiting resort staff come into sight and we leave the jeep to cross the Ramganga River and head for the most remote Resort this side of the blue stump.
Remote is may be but the facilities and staff service are all five star. This is the perfect hideaway for romantics or birdwatchers, trekkers or lounge lizards like myself. Squeals of delight drew me to the river, a family from Delhi were reviving in the shallows while I swam and ducked and dived in a waterhole like one of the parks many otters. For the first time in more than a year, to have my body in so much water was the most divine feeling.
Riverine has a unique profit sharing agreement with the local villages which ensures the continuance of the mahseer fish, a vital element in the food chain ultimately affecting the survival of the tiger, they also have a commitment to training and employing locals which makes it a an Eco Resort in the fullest sense.
Early in the morning, a five kilometre trek uphill to meet the villagers. The forest is alive with birds and birdsong, our guide recognises every bird as a neighbour. By the time we arrive the women have already cleared the household chores and are preparing to go to the fields to cut cattle food. We have chai with a local tailor and his family and then again later with this lady.
I reach the resort with a bunch of local soapwort in my hands, the guide has instructed me on the preparation and so I sit by the river bashing the stalks with a rock. I wash my hair with the resultant mix; the scent is sweet and lemony. After lunch a spectacular thunderstorm provides effortless entertainment as the evening slinks softly into camp and the aroma of the evening meal swirls teasingly towards me. Because of the rain and other commitments, we had to leave the resort in the predawn. At 4am we were crossing rivers and trudging through he jungle at a brisk pace towards the jeep.
Then the strangest thing happened. At this ungodly hour of the day, without even the slightest trace of caffeine or any other stimulant in my system I began to sing.
I can only attribute this to post Riverine Woods Euphoria and the feeling of At-one-ment with Nature. I was madly magically at one with Mother Nature, all my birthdays rolled into one.