Kabini, day 3

When people fly all the way from America or Europe to visit India, they generally don't make it to the Mysore area. Aside from one Australian couple, we were the only non-Indian family at Kabini. People kept asking us where we're from, so we'd say, "The U.S., but we live in Chennai." You could see their faces clear. "Oh! That explains what you're doing here!"

On our second morning drive, we were grouped with a father and his 10-year-old son from Bangalore who will be moving to Atlanta, Georgia, soon, and the family had just been in Chennai to get their visas. This father was a bird lover, so it was kind of fun to be on the drive with him. He was great at spotting things even the guide missed.

He also had a fabulous camera and was getting great pictures. I was jealous. We just had the Blackberry, so we're pretty short on photos. Cool things we saw that aren't shown here: giant squirrels playing in the trees (and making a lot of noise), peacocks perched in the trees with their plumage hanging down, those gorgeous blue birds, tons of spotted deer.

We also came across more tiger tracks. This tiger is much older and larger than the one that left the tracks we saw the previous morning.

Here's one of the many peacocks we saw that morning. This one was ready to dance and was calling to let the peahens know the show was about to start. The call is surprisingly loud. Alas, no peahens.

This was the only drive with no elephants or other large animals, but it was still fun. I love the sounds of the forest. After a few drives, we started to recognize some of the calls. The deer and the langurs sound a loud warning call whenever a tiger or leopard is in view, and we heard those calls a lot more often than you might expect. Then there are all the birds and insects. It's a pretty loud place, actually.

There are huge termite mounds all over the forest. Here's a picture of Samuel next to one that's within the camp.

After breakfast, the kids and I headed over to some tire swings that Evie had been dying to try out. I won the prize for Mommy of the Year when I swung her a little too wide and she smacked her thighs against a smaller tree. It was one of those moments when you feel bad but want to die laughing at the same time. Poor Evie! It only stopped her for a few seconds, though, and then she was back on the swings and wanting me to push again.

At the swings I met the wife and daughter of our bird-watching friend, and we talked about their coming move to Atlanta. She's really worried about it, and she said something I thought was kind of funny. She asked how our family was adjusting to India, and when I said we were doing pretty well, she said, "Well. Coming to India wouldn't be hard at all, but going there! I just don't know how we'll do it!" I really had nothing to say to that, so I smiled politely and said I was sure everything would be fine. Oh, yeah. Moving to India is EASY!

We were hanging out in our cottage after lunch when the Hall/Monkey wars began.

There are macaques all over the camp, along with signs everywhere warning you not to feed the monkeys. We've actually seen monkeys pretty often over this last year of travel, so some of the kids' excitement for them has worn off and we didn't pay them a whole lot of attention.

So the kids and I were playing a game of Go Fish in the cottage. John had been sitting on our balcony reading The Name is Rajini Kanth (I'll let him fill you in on that later) and the doors were wide open. All of a sudden, Johnny looked up from the game and said, "What the ..."

I turned around and caught a huge macaque in the act of downing the last of John's Coke -- straight from the bottle, no glass required. The monkey was looking at me, with the bottle still to its lips, with a look that totally said, "Busted!"

We were all frozen for a few seconds, then the macaque leaped off the balcony (bottle still in hand) to join a group of its friends that were fighting down below. I used that moment to rescue John's book and close the balcony doors, just as two of the monkeys leaped back up to the balcony.

All was well until Evie decided to walk up to the screened window and roar (she was still pretending to be a tiger). Oh my goodness. We suddenly had about five monkeys on the balcony peering in through the windows and doors. One climbed up and stared down at us from a window high above the balcony. Two others ran around to the other side of the cabin and stared at us through a window on that side.

Okay, kids! Back to the game! Nothing to see here! After we studiously ignored them for a while, the monkeys did eventually go away. We were all a bit jittery the next time we walked out the door, though.

Here we are in the jeep just before our last evening drive. The older man behind me was a really interesting guy. When he was a boy, he came to Kabini as a servant with British hunting parties, so he knew a lot about the forest and the wildlife. He was very enthusiastic about everything we saw or heard.

This sign is posted along the road leading into the national park. The black script at the top is Kannada, the local language.

Here's a big termite mound.

Our guide on this drive was a big-cat enthusiast. The evening's route went through areas where tigers and leopards are most frequently seen, though he warned us in the pre-drive briefing that 95 percent of the time you won't see anything. The cats are very good at hiding. Almost as soon as we got into the forest, we heard warning calls, but they were off the route (much to our guide's annoyance) so we couldn't follow them. We drove on.

And then ... excitement! We heard a deer warning call immediately on our right. The driver stopped the jeep just as a group of spotted deer came barreling out of the bushes right in front of us. Everyone was quiet as our spotter climbed to the roof of the jeep with his binoculars and a camera with a massive lens.

It's hard to describe the feeling of excitement and tension that comes with knowing you're probably only a few feet away from a wild tiger, even one you can't see. I kept hoping it would come into view. I also kept thinking I was insane to be sitting with my three children in an open jeep.

We sat in silence (even Samuel!) for quite a while, but no luck. Well, we didn't get eaten, so that's good luck, but no sighting.

The calls started moving farther away. Our spotter was beside himself. "That was so close! It's really uncommon to hear it that close! The tiger was probably right in those bushes!" and so on. Anytime jeeps pass on the routes the spotters and drivers tell each other what they've seen and heard. For the rest of the evening, all of the talk was that there was a tiger moving toward the tank area (wherever that is). We were so close! Gah!

No more tigers after that, but we saw a lot of elephants on the rest of the drive, some wild and some domesticated near the elephant camp.

At one point we saw a group of elephants coming down the road right at us. The driver just kept going toward them, and the older guy behind me was very nervous until he realized they were domesticated. "What are you doing? Are you crazy? Oh ... They're belled." Huge sigh of relief. We'd rather not be trampled today, thanks.

These two elephants are debarking a tree. That was interesting to see up close.

We saw a couple of baby elephants playing at the elephant camp. They were so cute! Samuel did some screaming and pointing: "El-e-phant!"

We were headed back out of the park when our guide caught sight of our second brush with the big cats. (They don't call them "spotters" for nothing.) It was a dead deer hanging from a tree, a leopard's recent kill. Our spotter spent some time with his binoculars trying to find out where the leopard was hiding, but the cat didn't seem to be home. Oh, well. The group that went with that guide the next morning actually did get a glimpse of the leopard hiding in the bushes near that tree.

So ends our last full day at Kabini. Lots of excitement but no tiger sightings. Alas.

Coming up: We almost see another tiger! Stay tuned.