Day 4- Tuesday 4th March- Ranthambhor, India

Another annoyingly early start today because as part of our golden triangle tour package, we could go on a tiger safari. Getting up was difficult. We were down for breakfast at 5:30 (toast and corkflakes, of course) and outside on the safari truck by 6. It was pretty darn cold, so I donned my blue hoody and my buff. Everyone we'd chatted to about the tiger safari had said it was fun, but the chances of actually seeing a tiger were slim. We were worried that waking up at 5:30 might have been a bit pointless if we didn't see anything.
Shortly after we'd got onto the truck, it set off and we had a tour around the hotels of Ranthambhor, picking up more tourists for the safari, including an english couple, a german family and a french pair. Also, a weirdo in an anorak who never spoke. By the time we'd picked everyone up, the sun was rising, but we quickly got to the safari area, which was in a valley where the sun's heat hadn't reached yet. The french bloke was picked to select a zone for us to explore, since the entire park is way to big to see all of it. He selected zone 4 and we set off, all eyes peeled.
I was thinking that, surely, a bright orange tiger would stand right out against the dull, dusty, brown forest we were travelling though. Just as I thought this, a tigress lazily appeared from a bush and walked straight across the truck's path and into another bush, camoflaging easily. We could still see it, and soon it emerged into an open area and sat down for all of us to gaze in wonder at and take pictures. After a good two minutes, she strolled away into the bushes beyond. After just five minutes on safari, we had seen an elegant tigress with no effort at all. Waking up at 5:30 had been worth it after all.
We continued our safari up rocky roads next to dodgy drops. We stopped for a while to look at a group of deer, the tiger food. A few cheeky birds flew down from the trees and stole food from peoples hands. Apparently another tiger was spotted, but I didn't see it.
Another few minutes on, we stopped for a rest in a nice open area with no danger of being pounced on and mauled. We saw more deer and more birds, including two green parrots that kept kissing. Back in the truck, we spotted a few monkeys in the trees. We were now heading back the way we came and when we got to the point where we'd seen the tiger, all the other safari groups had gathered on hearing about our encounter. After a while, nothing had happened and they all disappeared. We were the only group to see a tiger! We head back to the hotel at this point.
The combination of the uncomfortable, bumpy truck ride and the early morning left us shattered, so we head straight to bed when we got back at 10am. We were woken again two hours later by the room phone going off. I answered.
'Hello sir. Would you like some lunch?' the voice said.
I was still half asleep: 'Three plates of chips. And three cokes!'
I hung up, collapsed back into bed and hoped it was free. We were woken up again when the food arrived, paid for it, and scoffed to our hearts content.
The rest of the afternoon was spent lazing about and writing journals until we decided to go exploring the surrounding area by ourselves and see what we could find. A man outside our hotel offered us expensive internet services, then we found a small family shop where we bought water, fizzy drinks and crisps and then went back to the hotel due to finding nothing else. We grabbed a couple of seats next to the pool, drank our drinks an talked about the trip among many other things. We managed to spend a good 90 minutes here before going back to our room for an uneventful night only lit up by a game of music trivial pursuit, won by moi.
Before we went to sleep, a very large gecko came into our room. I went downstairs to ask the staff to get rid of it. The guy at reception didn't seem to understand what a gecko was, so I had to stick my tongue out and do an impression. It had already gone by the time we got back upstairs. Nice early night.