Corbett Stock Exchange (Corbett Tiger Reserve, Ramnagar)

If you're into throwing hip checks, jabbing elbows, and speaking broken uninteligible english with foreign tourists for 8 hours a day 6 days a week all for the love of extra cash-in-hand, then you're just the man/woman for the job. Step right up, congratulations! You are now in charge of Indian-Foreigner relations at the reservation office in one of the most amazing parks in India. Unfortunately though, in order to be eligible for those extra $20 bucks a day (enough to pay for your well desired stress relieving massage)you will endure 48 solid hours of hell in extreme heat and utter chaos.

All we wanted to do was see tigers.

What we got...were, actually...tigers.

What we had to deal with in between however, was like I mentioned...unorganized chaos. I don't even want to go into more detail but I can tell you that Friday night a fight broke out at the reservations office and the police had to come break it up. Can you believe this happening at The San Diego Zoo or even Disneyland? The main reason for this shameful process is that all the official reservationists accept bribes...and a whole hell of a lot of them.

So for I guess what was a 3 day/2 night trip (we actually never knew we could get into the park until that actual day) we saw a lot. Not only did we have to wait for roughly 8 hours for our "tour operator" to get us in, I had to let Hillary beat me about 11 times in a row in Uno. With the frustration of Indian ticket line politics on your mind, losing the most simple of all card games 11 times in a row does not help your mood.

So this needs to end...I'll attempt to tell you what we saw, since most of our "compulsory" (our new favorite Indian/English term) English speaking tour guides spoke limited English...here it goes:

Bengal tiger, woohoo, got that one!
Indian elephants- on a roll
Long snout crocodile
Mugger Crocodile
wild pigs (boar)
osprey
peacocks
all sorts of deer- spotted, samber, hog, barking
great indian hornbill or orange beaked hornbill?
kingfisher bird
nutheaded something or other bird?
black nbipaimnc ??
blue upiunz'cms ??
red wipuacnpn with mohawk ??

Well worth the trip in the end. Gotta go, the bell on the exchange floor has sounded. P.S. photos still to come