Ranthambore, I always wanted to go to Ranthambore, i've heard a lot about this place in my childhood and 1st thing that comes to my mind when i hear this name is
Tigers. Ranthambore is in Rajasthan in a city named Sawai madhopur, its a very small town with a history of forts n wars.
The hotels are near the National park and the safari has pick and drop service so travel is not a problem here, the park is divided into zones and there are 7-8 zones(all zones are not open always, due to reasons they may close particular zone), 4th being the biggest and is picturesque, 3rd being most beautiful, 1st zone has most sighting chances but it sucks if you return without sighing a tiger, as there is nothing to see otherwise.
The topography is awesome, its unique that the hills here are from Aravali range as well as Vindyachal, the sand is red in color due to presence of iron in it. You will see awesome lakes, ponds, waterfalls, grassland, hills, dense forest.
The animals mainly are Tigers(36), leopards(40), Monkeys, Gazzele(Chinkara), Sambar, Cheetal(spotted deer), Nilgai(blue bull), wild boar, Sloth bear. The guide told us that Sambhar is Tiger's favorite food.
To go into the park you ought to hire a Gypsy(capacity 6, price 500 per head) or a Canter(Capacity 20, 425 per head), i must add here that never ever hire a canter if you want to enjoy the nature, it sucks. The Gypsy will take you to a pre decided track and the guide will try to locate the tiger by the warning signals that the monkeys and birds pass in the jungle. There will always be a thrill that you will se a tiger. Ive heard that all the tigers in Ranthamboer will be getting GPS tags, that means the park will loose its awesomeness.
Hotels are good and reasonable, price soothing your budget, Taj group, Welcome group, ITC etc etc all have there presence in Ranthambore.
Its on luck to site a tiger, some people claim to see 7-8 in just one safari and many left empty handed even a week after.
The best time to visit is Feb,March,April....after the tiger is out of reach(thats what happened to us, damn rains), in october go if you want to see the lush green park, its beautiful out there.
Next destination was Masoori, we did one good thing that we heired a car for the local site-seeing instead of being a freelances, we were thinking that we will be at mercy of our driver but it turned to be a real fun coz of our driver, he was a class act, the only mistake he committed was takeing us to campty fall in the rush hour, but i must tell you if you visit the place do take a bath in the fall, it was such a nice experience to bath in the chilled water and having maggi n tea post that. The queue of cars took time to clear and we moved forth to Dhanaulti was the best place we visited, the park was super kool we did zipping and the tight rope walk, just opposite to the park was a tin shed selling hand made concentrated juices, i inquired about them from the shop boy and it turned out to be of a reputed n award winning doctor who runs a NPO kinda thing, awarded by the CM for developing a herbal diabetes treatment, we bought vrance's squash. the place was full of apple trees and while in in the vehicle i was amazed that how beautiful a place can be, the temperature was coolest what we found in our whole trip, and the driver left us near the mall road of Masoori- the queen of mountains.