Hi all

Before I got here Phil started orgainzing some trips. One of which was confirmed already, a visit to Corbert National park.

Friday February 8th. Got up at 7am to get our ride to Corbert National Park. It is suppose to be one of their best national parks with at least 50 tigers in the reserve. The drive took 6.5 hours and was quite the experience which I'll go into more detail later. We arrived and after checking in took a two hour elephant ride into the woods, saw deer and the local Fauna. The resort is just inside the park boundaries which is located at the Himalayian foothills. It's location overlooks a river with a good view of the foothills. This is the off season here so the place was pretty empty except for two other people. One was an American named Ken which we met later at super after our Elephant ride.

The plan for the next day was to get up at, wait for it, 5:30am to go for a jeep ride in the park. Dawn is the best time to see tigers apparently. Anyways it rained like the dickens that night. Well 6am rolled around and they came knocking at our door, to tell us the trip was cancelled but they brought us tea. We slept in and got up and had brunch and waited for the rain to stop. The night before for supper we had ordered beer. One came in a clear bottle which Phil got and the other was brown, which I got. Well at lunch it happened again. I think the staff were doing this on purpose. Also the beer had written right on it the it was not to be sold in Uattar-Pradesh, the state we were in. Hmm. To kill time Phil and I went for a walk down the river, with the local dog following us. Anyways we got to a ford in the river and had to take off our pants to cross. Man, Oh, man does Phil ever have the skinniest chicken legs in the world. No wonder he always wear's long pants.

Well we finally got the jeep ride through the forest which took about 4 hours. Saw lots of animals and even some tiger claw marks, but no tigers. Oh well. Had supper with the American and more clear bottle /brown bottle beer. Left the next morning at 10am. This time the trip back to Delhi took 7 hours.

Okay, now for the details of the drive. We left Delhi goig East to Marbosa (sp). All along the road, a main highway, was cluttered with shacks and booths. Some were not even more than tarps with bits of wood and rope. Really depressing, but like I said this was the worst of India. The ride took us through the cow belt/sugar cane belt of the country. One thing the locals do is collect cow dung and mix it with straw, let it dry and make these big mounds with them. They are used/sold later for cooking. All along the route were sugar cane trucks taking cane to the two plants we passed. It was funny to see the locals stealing the odd cane whenever these trucks were slowed in traffic. Some of the vehicles were outrageously overloaded and we saw a number of trucks with broken axles. The strangest part was the actual traffic on the road. There were people walking, on bikes, scooters, motor bikes, Oxen pulled carts, camels, cars, jeeps and trucks all sharing the same road. Not to mention the cows aimlessly wandering the road. There were also monkeys. I saw a pack of 5 terrorizing a dog at one point. These were not nice monkeys.

Anyways the trip itself, on the way back, was 292 Km and took 7 hours. About 42Km/h. I've been told that it's not better by train most of the time. These types of speeds were to be the norm for the rest of India. Man I miss nice paved roads.

Martin