So, from wild people to wild animals, I have come to Bandhavgarh National Park, which has the greatest concentration of tigers in the world. Up to 65 Indian (Bengal) tigers visit here. I use the word visit since they come and go. And unfortunately for me, they usually do the latter in winter months when they leave the watering holes in favour of the plains where they hunt buffalo. Some get a taste for the new meat and don't come back. But three females with cubs have stayed behind, and I have taken four jeep safaris to see if I could find them. I was joined by Dimmy from Moscow, and we managed to fill the jeep with a few other people each time to keep the cost down.

Before I reveal whether we found the tigers, first another jungle story. I had sat down to eat lunch in the garden of my guest house when out of nowhere three langur monkeys leapt onto my table and grabbed chapatis and handfuls of rice and curry. As I jumped to my feet, the monkeys went the other way knocking the table in my direction. I stood there, covered from head to toe in food. But my camera had been thrown onto the floor too. Fortunately it didn't suffer even a scratch. I was relieved that I don't have to explain that incident on an insurance claim form!

This is a very inaccessible place, so it is less developed than the other national parks. And my very slow and complex train journey here finally took me through the Araku Valley in the Eastern Ghats. I had been trying hard to fit in this scenic journey, and when I finally did, the train was two hours late and very crowded, but I did manage to get a nice view from my position by the open door before darkness fell. There were rivers, waterfalls and rolling hills, dotted here and there with colourful tribal people working on the land. It was a nice ending to that particular area.

But back now to tigers. We saw several fresh tiger prints, including those of the cubs. And on each safari we heard several alarm calls from monkeys, deer and birds, indicating that a tiger could be nearby (or it could be a leopard or a jackal). We saw spotted deer, samber deer, wild boar, several jackals at close range, langur monkeys and macaques. And of the birds, we saw Indian rollers, vultures, yellow-footed green pigeons, black drongos, jungle fowl and grey hornbills. So there is plenty of food here to sustain the tigers, and only this morning a tiger took a cow from near the filling station - witnessed by several villagers, and a common occurance. But sadly, these stories are the closest we came to seeing one. Some people did, some people didn't, but with four outings under my belt I was very unlucky and this was a bitter blow. It's hard to know when or if I will get another chance to see tigers in the wild.

The jungle saps the heat out of the air once the sun goes down, so nights are bitterly cold. I keep thinking I've experienced cold for the last time for a while, but then I seem to find myself somewhere else that is cold.