We arrived at the reserve too late to go in to the reserve so one of the guides drove us to a posh camp site set in a mango orchard to spend the night. We had dinner by candle light on our porch, was tres romantic, til Tom got the pooooos!

Next day all better we set off in our jeep to the reserve. It is absolutley massive and it took us 2 1/2 hours just to drive to the middle of it. On our way we saw Serpent Eagle, Crocodiles, 3 different types of deer and peacocks. We arrived in Dhikala where we were to spend the night, in dorm type accomo (our first so far!). In the afternoon we climbed upon an elephant and went for a late afternoon safari... we trapsed through the jungle, our legs getting covered in scratches, but still we saw no tigers. We did see boars, tortoises, herds of deer a mahoooosive bee hive, so we weren't too dissapointed. Of course we saw lots of monkeys but we're not too keen on them at the moment as they seem to be getting a bit too big for their bananas! They almost attacked a small child at camp and scared the the bejesus out of him, poor thing, i think i'd have fainted. That evening there was a big lightning storm which made our stay in the jungle even more exciting!

Up at 5 we had a quick breakfast whilst watching a brawl between two guides, plastic chairs and trays were used as weapons, but it finished as quickly as it started. Off we hopped in our Jeep to search for Tigers... but still none :-(. In the afternoon we got dropped off at a watch tower for 4 hours! So we got our binoculars out and time went quite quickly as we watched the funny peacocks trying to impress a mate and the monkeys wrestling in the grass.

On the drive out of the park and our last afternoon safari we saw a wild mummy and baby elephant crossing the river. It was amazing. So much more exciting than seeing the tame elephants. The mummy made sure the little one was upstream to her and the baby stayed close the whole way. I loved it. Then nearly when we were out the park we drove past a male elephant about 5 meters away from us in the bush, we stopped and watched him and he stared right back at us. Although we are slightly dissapointed at not seeing a tiger, seeing the elephants like this completly made up for it!