The Bandit Of Watch Tower No. 1

18th March 2009 - Dhikala, Corbett National Park - India.
Nachiketa Bajaj

This story revolves around a monkey, better known as The Bandit of Watch Tower No 1 in Corbett National Park. On the morning of 18th March, Varun, Myself and Angad decided to sit atop the tower in hope to spot a Tiger who had recently killed a buffalo in the grassland. Tower No. 1 gives a panoramic view of the Grassland across the Ramganga river (as seen in the picture below) and is located on a popular forest road called Sambar Road.

We packed our lunch and left the camp at 10:45 AM to reach the tower as the gates for the inner routes close at 11:00 AM and open at 3:00 PM.

We reached the watch tower, picked up our gear and climbed our way up the ladder to the top which was quite a tedious task with all the equipment in hand. Finally we made it to the top and started setting up our tripods and other equipment after looking at the breathtaking view of the grassland. We saw another jeep coming to a stop below the tower but we didn't take notice of it and continued on with setting our gear up and settling down to play the waiting game with the Tiger when suddenly we heard a loud scream and we looked down and saw that a monkey had jumped into the jeep below and snatched some eatables from it's occupants and fled into the bushes nearby and I wondered then if this could be the same notorious Bandit of Watchtower No. 1 which I had been seeing there since years together.

We quickly decided to go into defensive mode and hid our eatables from view so that they could be safe...Well that's what we thought but .......

I took another look down the ladder and around the tower but could not see the bandit and then settled down absorbing the scenic beauty of the place and spotted some beautiful birds like the Collared Falconet, Purple Sunbird and near threatend towards extinction species like Lesser Fish Eagle perched on top of the trees around the tower and clicked them.

Varun was now looking through his binoculars into the direction where the Tiger had made a kill and Angad was upto his usual experiments with panoramas and I was sitting on the floor of the watch tower with my feet hanging out in the air through the safety railing when someone tapped my shoulder from behind, I looked back and saw the Bandit mocking me with his mouth open trying to scare me and tried to run off with a pack of our eatables but failed as Angad managed to yell out in time. I quickly got up on my feet and all three of us tried to scare it away with my Tripod.

As we tried to scare Mr Bandit away he climbed up to an elevated position above us and tried to scare us from there and mocked us badly by shitting down near where we were. Finally we managed to scare it away ... well atleast for some time and got back to our forest watch. Another 30 minutes passed peacefully and we had some good conversation about the Wildlife in Corbett National Park and clicked some more birds. Chances of sighting the Tiger in that vast grassland seemed bleak as the land though seems flat is actually not that way but is rather wavey with small streams passing through it which could not be seen from where we stood. It was 2 PM now and we decided to retreat back and get some rest and some snacks to fill our growling stomachs but alas! ... There was just a moment between our thought of having snacks and the bandit striking again without warning and running off with our bag of eatables and teasing us from the deck below leaving us with our growling stomachs.

All we could do then was to click him feasting on our food and nothing else... It didn't seem funny at that moment but we surely laughed about it a few minutes later. Nasir came to pick us up at about 3:00 PM with some packed lunch which was a blessing for our stomachs. We munched on our lunch and left for another safari through the beautiful forest giggling about our experience with The Bandit Of Watch Tower No. 1.

PS:- Any of you visiting the park...Beware of the Bandit :-)

Photo Credit:- The Pictures of the bandit himself were taken by our bandit Angad Pal Singh Kingra. Thanks for sharing buddy. :-)