I had to look it up. I couldn't remember what the name of the city in India was. And I couldn't remember the names of the states that bordered nearby – if you can count a dirt road that looked more like a wide trail as a state border. I found out later that the 2 states were in the past basically at war or at least highly unfriendly. Maybe that's why the road went through the wild life reserve. This particular journey started after I had lived on a houseboat on the Ganges in Varanasi (Benares). I could write about 3 months on that boat but that's not this story. I left Benares and decided to hitchhike as I was totally sick of the trains.
Now India was much different then. There were essentially almost no cars on the road – even on the main highway between Delhi and Calcutta. However, there were trucks. Lots of large trucks. The drivers liked picking up hitchhikers I guess – I never saw another hitchhiker so maybe that was it. The truck drivers had insane schedules where they drove for days at a time with almost no sleep. To keep awake, they ate opium. Large amounts of opium have a rebound effect – keeps you wide awake. So the routine was I'd get a ride, be given opium to eat (enough to make me sleepy – the driver would have been insulted if I had refused the gift of opium – honest, he would have...) and I would ride on the top of the cabs which had a sleeping box. If that doesn't sound to safe, it wasn't. There were tipped over trucks on the sides of the road. The road was only one lane and the drivers just loved to play chicken. I guess some lost.
So I went to Bodh Gaya first as I wanted to see the Bodhi tree that Buddha sat under. I didn't stay that many days as the town was packed with Tibetans as the Dalai Lama was there. And it was cold. It was December and I had to head south. I had decided to hitch to Puri as it was on the ocean and was supposed to be warm – basically a small place where people from Calcutta sometimes went to 'vacation'. But I did not want to go to Calcutta, a city that likely has the largest number of people in the world except for the fact that with so many living on the street, well they couldn't be counted. So I found a road marked on a map to a place called Ranchi. I had no idea what the road would be like and it was fine all the way to Ranchi. I got a good ride to there. For some reason, the driver took me to a catholic monastery there – I guess he thought I could sleep there. I have no recollection of sleeping anywhere on the way. Besides the tops of trucks and floors of chai tea stalls. It was only after that I learned the well known guru Yogananda had his ashram in Ranchi. The priests were very good to me and gave me a nice little house to sleep in. They unfortunately didn't tell me about the road heading south. Or maybe I didn't stay long enough. I was on the road by dawn. I have this idea that perhaps a priest came to tell me in the morning that traveling south out of Ranchi was maybe not such a good idea. Maybe he did. Maybe he's never been there.
Ranchi is the last city in the state Jharkhand. The maps I see on the net now show other towns on the road south but I don't remember them. You think I should as I quickly discovered that there was no traffic at all south of Ranchi. None. Zero. So that meant walking, a lot of walking. I guess I walked for days. Maybe I forget sleeping on chai shop floors. I do however remember the border to the next state which is Odisha. There is no border. Unless you count a kind of no man's/person's land. Basically, a jungle with an excuse for a road.
Near the beginning of the jungle, there was a large billboard. You could tell it had been put up by the British and never touched again. It was falling down and broken. But I could see that it said 'Future location of wildlife reserve'. It seemed that the future hadn't come. I had wandered into bird sanctuaries before. I think I was kind of in a way thinking along that lines. Some pretty birds. That's about it. And I wonder how far it is to walk through it. As I recall it wasn't really that far. Miles I guess but not long enough that I would have to sleep by the road. As there certainly wasn't anything else. No houses, no traffic, no nothing. Not even any birds. There was however at some point a small sign by the side of the road. It wasn't like the billboard. It was so small that I would imagine a car venturing through might not notice it. It just said 'Tiger Crossing'. I very quickly realized that a critical time of decision had descended quickly. What do I do? Turn around and head back to Ranchi? Included in my wish to never turn back was a fleeting feeling that maybe tigers follow their prey. So if I turned around I would be heading towards a tiger. Or I could stay exactly where I was standing. Don't move. The biggest problem was the sign – I would be essentially standing there waiting for a tiger to cross. My best bet was the third choice. Just keep walking. Move away from the tigers, pick up the pace a bit and hope that the tigers stuck to the designated crossing spot and not somewhere else and not a second marked tiger crossing.
Years later, in North America, in a campsite I saw a warning sign (that I assume had to do with bears and such) : 'Food Runs'.
I didn't see or hear a tiger. That may have a great deal to do with why I'm still here writing this down. I did finally come into a small village. Big enough for a chai shop. Now the people looked at me with what I would describe as incredulous stares. This was either because they had never really seen a white person (actually possible as it happened in another village), or they had never seen someone survive walking through the tiger reserve. I don't know. But I did manage to figure out that the next day a bus was due to pass through going my way. So I spend another night on the dirt floor of a chai hut. This one was different though. There was always someone awake. I could only assume they were watching out for tigers. Next day before the bus arrived, I realized that the villagers were collecting money so they could buy me a bus ticket. I was astounded as this village was very isolated and very poor. I took the bus with a ticket to the next town. After I figured that the jungle seemed to have stopped, I got off the bus and began to walk again, wondering if trucks ever came down this road.
Sometimes when I feel very stuck, emotionally or physically or spiritually or all 3, I think of this experience and decide to just keep walking forward.

jb, Victoria, BC, October 2015