Visit to Pench & Kanha National Park

To break the routine this summer, I decided to pack my bags and head towards a new destination, Pench and Kanha National Park. Rudyard Kipling was inspired to write one of the famous telecast show from my childhood memories – The Jungle Book (with the lead character Mowgli). Both jungles are located in Madhya Pradesh, not too far from Maharashtra border. Pench is at a driving distance of 90 kms from Nagpur (a drive of about an hour and a half) and Kanha at a driving distance of about 200 kms from Pench (say a drive of 4 hours). For our journey, we headed for Pench in the morning of May 19, 2010.

Pench National Park

Pench is a teak forest and is different, quite dense and surrounded by thicker trees. For the first safari, we moved in to the park on a burning and blazing hot day of May 19^th at 3:30 in the afternoon with a clear anticipation to see the beast of the Jungle. The drive into the jungle is in to a classic Maruti Gypsy (too comfortable and quite steady on jungle streets). Apart from the tiger, there are many other attractions to look around including Gaur also known as Indian Bison, langoor, deer, peacock amongst the breed of animals and Racket tailed drongo, barbet, Magpie robin, lesser whistling teal, golden oriel etc. amongst the breed of beautiful birds found in India. When you are in the jungle, you, your driver, and your guide, all are alert looking to the left and right with anticipation to see him at any moment. All the drivers in the park are quite friendly with each other and keep a good coordination amongst them to please the tourist. There was this one spot, where we met another driver who told us that it is worth waiting here. This place was like Pench F1 track, surrounded by driving lane (jungle streets) from all four sides and in the centre was lots of trees and rocks. And, there somewhere in the middle was the beast hiding from all of us, may be lazing, may be sleeping or may be shying away from us. To be precise, it was 5:10 p.m. when we decided that we will wait and 6:01p.m. was the moment he came out walking. Wow… was the moment, and pleasure could be seen all over!! He walked a little bit, guess got tired and sat again after taking few steps forward. While we were sighting him, there was this particular moment when tiger got up and all of a sudden, the whole climate changed, with a gust of wind all over the jungle. I put that to be the most majestic moment of the whole tour. It felt like, the whole atmosphere is kind of saluting the tiger. We got to see this tiger like for about 45 minutes from different parts of our F1 track :). Well, park has to follow certain rules, 7.00 p.m. was the time we were supposed to be done with the safari and out of the gates of the park, the driver ensured that we see the beast to the fullest.

Second safari was in the same park, next day as early as 5.00 am in the morning. The jungle early in the morning is so cool, soothing and freshening with wonderful birds chirping all over the park. The whole look of the jungle at this time is just awesome, class and beautiful, don’t have the words to express. One more thing that happens in these parks is, an Elephant Ride, basically, mahawats (the rider) gets into the interior jungle with the elephant and once a tiger is spotted, it’s a jackpot for the tourist. One after the other, each tourist is taken to see the tiger from the most nearest Gypsy accessible street. Sitting on the back of the most eldest elephant of the jungle, Jungbahadur, we saw the second tiger of the tour, in the second safari. This elephant is remembered for killing his colleague (another elephant) in some recent past. Safari ended with most pleasant memories from Pench National Park.

Kanha National Park

Afternoon around 3.00 p.m. on May 20^th we left for the next destination, Kanha. All the people were sleeping in the quails since every one had got up quite early in the morning. All of a sudden there was something which obstructed everone's sleep, opened the eyes and saw what, it was raining (Icing on the cake moment!!!). Just opened the window and could simply smell the dust and freshness of the first rain in the air!! By the time we reached Kanha in the evening around 6.00 pm, it had rained quite a lot and the whole atmosphere had suddenly turned from 42 degree heat to the chilling winter waves. While we were happy with the rains, it left some of us a bit worried about the upcoming safaris, the anticipation to see the tiger here was a little bit fading. Kanha is a forest full of Sal and Bamboo trees risen high up in the sky in most part of the jungle. One specialty of this Bamboo tree I got to know, it gives flowers and that too for only once in its lifetime. Kanha is equally beautiful, with superb smooth landscape and even in the burning hot summer, it was lush green. The whole scene would leave any one with a thought in mind that it will surely turn into a green pasture of heaven on earth in the mighty rains. In the 3 safaris we did in Kanha, apart from tiger, we saw so many animals, like Chital, sambar, wild boar, langur, sloth bear, wild dog, jackal and quite a lot of birds in and around this park. Jungle also has one particular area, where the administrators have constructed a beautiful museum, here one can easily find any and all the information about the park. Our third safari at Kanha will remain in the memory lane for long time for never forgettable tiger sighting. This time again it was on the back of an elephant, but the sighting was just one of the best as it could be which also resulted into a wonderful deck of images.

To sum up, a wonderful experience, wonderful memories, wonderful images, and one more experience for the lifetime. Kanha, Pench, I will be back again :D

Adding a link to the best of the rest images from the jungle of Pench and Kanha

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Click for images uploaded on Flickr