Kanha National Park, MP

After Pench, we visited Kanha National Park and stayed there for 2 days.

Kanha National Park (23rd & 24th Dec)

On both the days, we went around the park in the morning. The park is about 2000 Sq.Km. and each safari lasted for about 6hrs. The mornings were really cold and I was typically quivering in the first hour of safari. After an hour, with sunlight passing through the tree gaps, the temperature in the air rose and the cold became manageable. Kanha is undoubtedly beautiful with lush green forest and huge meadows. Sal trees and bamboos are the prominent vegetation here. Anytime, Jim Corbett National park is the best park in India. Anyway, who can deny Kanha was the inspiration for Kipling's classic Jungle book and it reserves a special place among the Indian national parks. After all, it is one of the well maintained park in India.

For the safaris, Saleem and his friend Anand joined us. Saleem manages few safari vehicles in Kanha and he is also a naturalist. Anand is the manager of the resort we were staying at. Both of them are nature & wildlife enthusiasts. In the first few hours of our safari, we spotted lots of birds - Some of them which I still remember are Rocket tail Dracon, Seven Sisters, Woodpeckers, Golden Back Kingfisher, Parakeets, Plum Headed Parrots, Kites, Owlets and the rare Snipe. Lots of peacocks were freely moving around in the meadows and we spotted lots of Chital, Sambar, Barking Deer and Bison. We also saw the not so common Wild dog and Barasingha . Barasingha is present only in Kanha and is preserved here from extinction.


Here, in Kanha, I wanted to incentivize myself by spotting tiger in the wild. This was a highly motivating reason for me to visit the national parks this season. At many times, I came very close to spotting a tiger in this park, but didn't manage to see any. We saw fresh pug mark of a big male tiger which according to our guide, should have just crossed the road & moved inside the dense region. I also saw deers alerting each other with their alert calls - It was in a meadow and I was dreaming that a tiger is gonna come pouncing at the deer :) There were other missed chances like in the interior forest camp area, the male tiger was walking around freely for about an hour. We missed it by about 15mins. While going along a trail, first of the three jeeps spotted a tiger crossing the road. But, our jeep was 5th in the line and we couldn't watch that.

After such a long search for the tiger, I became desperate to spot the tiger in "The tiger Show". In tiger show, elephant mahouts spot a resting tiger and take people to that place by elephant so that the tiger don't get disturbed. On the first day of safari, Saleem had very high hopes of spotting the tiger in wild and we reached late at the centre where we need to register for the tiger show. We were 58 in number and the jeeps till 55 got to see the tiger! On the second day, we were a little proactive and enrolled for the tiger show earlier and were 13 in number. But, the tiger show didn't happen that day since the forest rangers couldn't find any resting tiger! There were many such instances happening through out our presence in Kanha national park. However, these didn't disappoint me as Bhandavgarh was next in our list.


In Kanha, other than the safari times, we spent our time walking around the small village. While walking around, I saw couple of trees with all its branches, full of butterflies. They belonged to same family (same color & pattern) and they were eating the tree leaves. It is the first ever time, I saw thousands of butterflies in one place! It was truly interesting to watch.

We had some of our meals at Mohan dhabha near the Khatia gate. Parathas & Lassi were very tasty. While you are there, I suggest you to try out this place. We met Mr. Yadav while we were traveling from Pench to Kanha. He is the owner of Pugmark resort in Kanha. He had invited us for evening tea and we visited him. He is very friendly, but very talkative too. He is an ex-army and police service man and was mentioning about his service experience to us. His resort is pretty good with fine rooms charged at nominal Rs.1200/- In Kanha, there are many resorts in this price range. For people caring for budget and cleanliness, these resorts are of good choice.

Kanha to Bhandavgarh

From Kanha to Bhandavgarh, it is about 400Kms and we had all of it to be covered in a day by regular local transport buses. We took the first bus at 6:30 a.m from Kanha and had to switch over to multiple buses at different points of our journey. The experience was all tolerable till 3p.m, after that it became really frustrating. The body started giving up and the back started complaining. But, I chose to travel by bus and got to do it. It is part & parcel of experiencing the local culture. After a long day of travel, we reached Bhandavgarh at 8:30 p.m and then came to know that Gypsy for the next day safari is not booked (though we have the permission to enter the park). We tried through different people to get a Jeep booked, but couldn't. We were too tired to do anything further & decided to take care of it in the morning.

Stopping here for now. I will post my Bhandavgarh experience in next posting.

Brief details on route to & accommodation at Kanha are at How to Reach & Where to Stay