that might be of interest:

http://www.toftigers.org/[/color]

Will look into this more Pippa, thanks.
But I'm still trying to work out what went wrong with your trip.
As I said you would either love India or hate it I am worried for the reasons you hated it.
Has India been totally spoiled by the tiger habitat takeover by the tourist board?
Have I been very lucky?
OR
Have I closed my eyes to what you found in the parks?

I think some or part of all these!

The parks tourism was still controled by the forestry department when I last visited although the tourist board was involved I got over the restrictions by paying for local people to join me. This would leave me in control & able to leave the free for all of a tiger sighting on the main routes to travel further into the forest definitely where the Cantors could not reach.

Hmmm! Will I ever return to India? When I was young & travelled the world I found that to return to a country led to dissapointment & it was never as I remembered it.

Yet I return to Botswana & Zimbabwe as often as possible & every time is better & Different?
Now I'm confused!
- Edited by kipper on 05.08.2009, 17:20 -

Kipper - sorry I did cause confusion.

I would not say I hate travelling to India. I just hate the way they conduct the game drives, treat the elephants and exploit these animals. Don't get me started on the "elephant back safaris" / more appropriately called "tiger show".

The more I have got distance to the India trip the more I become certain that I am going to return - one day.

As far as I understand the parks are still managed by the forest ministry. The tourism office is involved when it comes to lodges, infrastructure (well, infrastructure......sort of it) but I don't think they have a say regarding how/where/what in view to tigers.

When you visit the TOFT website you will also be able to get to linked websites and a blog.

When reading all that staff - which is mostly negative from the tigers point of view - you might get some more grey hairs

And yes - sometimes it's the case that when you return to a country years after you have been there first it has great potential to deliver disappointment.

Frankly - I am not very positive regarding the tiger's survival in India beyond 2020

I think it's only related to some folks loosing their faces when they correct their very own decisions which clearly have proven to be wrong.

On my side and based on the experiences I gathered when travelling these 5 parks in India it's EXTREMELY difficult to promote tiger safaris. I must be honest and explain in length how safaris are conducted in India. By now ALL have said "NO THANKs no desire to go and visit" which is bad for the tiger's survival. But one simply cannot sell a tiger safari honestly without providing a client with ALL the facts. The only reason a client takes India into consideration is the fact that IF one wants to see these wonderful cats in the wilds then one has to go rather today than tomorrow. And some people will sacrifice their safari standards and go. At least expectations regarding other wildlife, game drives etc etc must be extremely adjusted/lowered.

We will see how it's developing..............

I've never visited India but a friend of mine returned there after more than 30 years' time.
She was shocked at the doubling of the population (from about 400 million to over a billion) and visiting what used to be pristine wildlife refuges that were now horribly degraded.

Places like Bangalore which were quaint small cities with neat little houses and tree-lined street where now huge cities of gigantic lowering skyscrapers and construction everywhere. The tree-lined streets were now widen and treeless, to accommodate 8-laned highways. She tried but failed to merely take a walk down a street....being constantly pummeled by the crowds, she finally retreated back to her hotel grounds.

Then she said something very chilling, simply: "what I saw in India is our future".

This is not to bash the developing world, even in the USA the population has doubled in 35 years - from 150 million to 300 million. Although the human population was starting to become stable and sustainable (average of 2.3 children per couple), the tens of millions of new immigrants both legal and illegal have a much higher fertility rate pushing us to clear 100's of millions of acres of forests and wetlands.

As for one of our favorite safari destinations, Kenya, the UN did a census of the human population in the 1950's...it was 5 million. Today it's pushing toward 40 million. Why does nobody mentioned the booming human population when talking about the drought, the clearing of the Mau Forest, the drying up and pollution of lakes and rivers, the dwindling wildlife - even in so-called protected parks and reserves. The tradition of large families certainly was a good strategy a hundred years ago but now when we attempt to save all the children - where is the government leadership to push education for smaller but healthier and better educated families? Only KWS Dir. Kipng'etich said something posted in a British newspaper, but I didn't see it in a Kenyan one! He said "KENYA IS DESTROYING ITSELF. The population has reached an unsustainable level. We are killing ourselves slowly by destroying the forests. The destruction of the Mau Forest is like dancing with death."

Now that's really telling it like it is!!!

kat
Think of the human effort to get us going up to 120 years of age by all the new medical inventions fighting aging and all that.
We - the Western World - cannot afford to spend 120 years on earth. We all must acknowledge our finite lifespan which helds 50 for some, 70 for most and rarely 90. But don't let it happen that humans get all sorts of replacements which keep them going ending like zombies who have to be put in certain rubish dumps because of all that machinery and plastic within them.
In the earlier days it was the fittest who survived. Now it's the wealthiest who can afford aparatus medicine on end.
If we all want to sustain our lifestyle and the developing countries to enhance theirs we would need at least 5 planets to sustain that. But we have only that one Earth and so your friend is right: Our outlook is not that great. We most definitely are facing a lifestyle the Africans have right now - within the next 30 years. It's all about getting "them" up and "US" down - to balance the whole thing.

There is no doubt about it - we won't keep our lifestyle for longer than 10 years from now. Many have already given up their middle class lifestyle and entered a level they have never dreamed of.
And this recession is only the beginning. Loosing jobs in the millions in Europe which cannot be brought back. These jobs cannot be replaced by environmentally friendly jobs like producing solar panels, hybrid cars etc.

It's rather looking dark......