Bhandavgarh National Park, MP

From Kanha, we moved on to Bhandavgarh and stayed there for 2 days. Bhandavgarh was our last chance of spotting tiger in this trip.

Bhandavgarh National park (26& th 27th Dec)

For the first day morning safari, we didn’t have the vehicle booked by the hotel. In the morning, we went near the park gate (Tala) to find if someone can share their safari vehicle with us. After a hard search, we found an American who was ready to help us. We thought that we were lucky to get the jeep, and now our luck of spotting the tiger would soon follow :) After 3 days of safari in Pench & Kanha, I was not very keen in experiencing the forest. The forest here is very much like Kanha with Sal trees & Bamboos and I must say that the scenic beauty of this park didn't impress me. My only interest was in spotting animals, especially tiger since that was one of the biggest reasons for this trip. It is commonly said that, in Bhandavgarh the chance of spotting tiger is 99%. Before we planned for this trip, we heard from many people that there is no way that anyone could come back from Bhandavgarh without spotting a tiger. At least, we can spot the tiger in the ‘tiger show’. All these words made me feel very hopeful about spotting tiger in at least one of the three safaris that we have planned in Bhandavgarh.

We did all the three planned safaris in Bhandavgarh and in each of the trip we came out of the forest without spotting a tiger. I must say that I was disappointed after each trip and the hope of spotting the tiger was gradually wearing out. Every trip we made, we were always close to the tiger, but could never spot it. There was a time that a small tiger cub moved into a bush (spotted for very brief moment by a guide in another jeep) and didn't bother to come out for more than an hour of our waiting. It had two other siblings and the mother Tigress was not around. All of the jeeps waited there with the hope that mother would return in the evening. But, she didn’t come. May be she chose to take a different route that day! There was another time, when we heard a loud growl of the tiger - The guide mentioned that the sound is arising not from too far, and it should be within 100-200 meters off the road. It was really thrilling to hear the wild growl of the tiger. I wished that he comes out and gives me a look :) But, that didn't happen. Some other time, there was a deer in the meadow which got alerted and started making the alert calls. We waited there for a long time only to watch the paranoid lone deer.

Anyway, after 3 safaris we didn't spot a tiger in Bhandavgarh. The reasons mentioned by many were - It is winter and the tiger can easily settle inside the forest as the water reserve is high. Due to peak season, there are too many vehicles and many more such obvious reasons. But, how can all these be true only for Tala zone in Bhandavgarh? In the same forest, due to peak season, another zone named Magdi was opened up. The general idea is that the spotting of tiger in Magdi is difficult as it is denser than Tala. However, in one safari, there were 3 sightings of tiger and all the jeeps could spot them! So, the reasons quoted are just means of convincing people and does not really apply to the happenings. I say, it is mere luck! So far, we had 7 safaris in total in this trip and the luck didn’t bother to pass by my side. I went through height of disappointment and convinced myself that I would visit in summer again. Our driver was mentioning that "In winter, people ask if you spotted tiger, whereas in summer, people would ask how many tigers you spotted!".

After all the disappointing safaris, we were just wandering in the streets of Bhandavgarh. We had another half a day in Bhandavgarh and then our plan was to go to Khajuraho. The disappointment was really bothering me and decided to take another safari in Bhandavgarh, not wanting to miss a chance. I didn’t want to blame myself for just freaking out on the Bhandavgarh roads, instead of spending the time in the forest. But, the problem was we neither had permission nor the safari vehicle. Anyway, after some hassle, we ended up sharing it with few MBA students who had come from Pune. Now, in this final trip, I didn't have any expectation. I took this trip so that I don't later regret that I should have made another try somehow. Anyway after 3 hours of safari in the last trip, I didn't spot any tiger. We were coming to the end of our safari number 8 and all I saw was wild cat and mangoose! yee... But, wait! suddenly things changed. There were hoards of jeeps waiting in one area and our driver immediately understood the cause and rushed towards it. There she was! I saw a tigress doing her 'cat walk'. It was an absolute beauty. After walking for some time, she attempted to climb a tree - All her four paws on the tree and her tail waving in the air. What a scene to watch in the wild! It was one of my dream come true. The excitement maddened me for few moments - My luck was pushed to the last 5mins of my 33hrs of total safari time. Never mind, I got her in wild and it was an extraordinary moment (No photos though, since it was slightly dark and slightly far). It is one of the most unforgettable moments in my life and we moved out of Bhandavgarh with a success story to tell!

Our next stopover was Khajuraho and we headed towards it. Rest of it in the next posting.

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

At Pench National Park, Madhya Pradesh

We visited national parks in Madhya Pradesh during last winter. We started our trip on 19th Dec with some planning done before hand. Having enough time for this trip, we decided to travel by train both up & down.

It takes about 24hrs by train to reach Nagpur from Bangalore. But, our train Bagmati Super Fast Express took about 30hrs, stopping at many stations at will letting all passenger trains, local trains pass by. Shockingly, this long journey train doesn't even have a pantry car. They supply food only from few destined stations and only mineral water & jumpins fruit drink is available on train. So, any utterance of food items at any station immediately arouse our interest. At one time, there was a vendor selling Samosas at a station. The moment the train stopped, all of us in the boogie bought Samosas instantly. When another samosa vendor entered the train and saw us all munching samosas, he was surprised and said "Arey, train abhi roka tha, magar sabke hath me samosa hai!!" :)

From Nagpur, we took a local bus to reach Khawasa. We took our seats next to the driver to have a better look of Nagpur city. The city seemed to be pretty clean. Ofcourse, it is only based on the streets the bus took us through. From Khawasa, by Jeep we reached Heaven's Garden Resort, ~5Kms from Pench National Park gate.

Pench National Park (21st Dec)

In the shivering morning cold, we eagerly reached the park gate by 5:30, an hour ahead of the park opening timing. Early at the gate means you would be one of the first few vehicles to enter the park. Most often, the animals would get disturbed by the vehicle sound and slowly move away from the trail. So, it is always better to be one of the first few vehicles in any trail.

At 6:30 sharp, the gate opened and the vehicle started moving. With the moving wind, it became even colder and I started shivering. Sweater, Muffler, Jacket didn't protect me completely from cold. After few minutes, once we entered the thick jungle, I forgot the coldness and completely got indulged in the forest. Due to winter, the park had very many dry areas. The pench river which flows in the park, didn't have much water too. These changes didn't matter to me. I was ardent about meandering in the park. Of course, only by staying in the jeep. We are not allowed to step down from the jeep inside the forest perrmises.

While maundering in the jeep, I sighted some of the commonly seen animals like Chitals, Sambar, Wild boar & Bison. Though Chitals & Sambar are common, I can never become weary of watching them in the wild. At times, watching them being very casual & careless, eating the fallen leaves from the tree, sometimes observing them to be alert and noticing them taking every step ahead with great caution, excitedly listening to their alert calls which they call out loud when some danger or threat nears them, it can never be dreary. I forget the passing of time in their presence.


I had an exhilarating moment, when I saw a herd of deers suddenly fleeing into the forest and finding that a Jackal was the reason. The Jackal was approaching towards us. For every few steps it took, it looked at us and ensured that we are of no danger to it. It hurriedly crossed the trial and quickly vanished into the forest on the other side. Another really interesting moment was when we sighted the fresh kill of a deer by a predator. It was very close to the trail and I could clearly see that the spotted deer's intestine was torn apart and was missing. The guide mentioned that the deer is killed by Leopard - Leopard first eats the intestine of the prey. Our guide was repeatedly saying that the Leopard should be within 100-200 metres of its prey and this shy animal should have been disturbed by some vehicle sound. We quietly and patiently waited at this spot for sometime, but the adamant Leopard vehemently refused to come closer to its prey. It has all the day to guard its prey and eat it in the night. But, I have only 4 hrs of safari in the morning and 3 hrs in the evening :(

Moving on from Pench (Pench - Kanha)

Early in the morning, around 7:30 a.m, we left Pench. It took us about 6hrs by bus to reach Khatia gate, Kanha National Park. When choosing to take bus in Madhya Pradesh, it is a must to be aware that the road conditions could be terrible, as worse as not finding laid roads on some stretch of the travel. Also, the buses could lack suspension. The duo could do magic to your backs! So better be aware of this before taking up this mode of transportation. I was aware of these facts and the experience didn't come out as a surprise to me.

After a hard day travel, we had a relaxing evening in Kanha. I will post my Kanha experience in the next post.

For those who want to go to Pench, I have added details at How to reach & where to stay at Pench

On my U.S.A travel - Nature & Wildlife at Yellowstone

After a long drive of 350 miles from Salt Lake City, we reached West Yellow Stone around 2 a.m. Drive with Murano was very comfortable through out the trip and we were not tired at all.

YELLOW STONE (3rd Jun to 5th Jun)

We planned our visit to this park a month back and booked Madison Hotel - This is a historic hotel built with wood. On the night of reaching yellow stone, we reached the hotel around 2 a.m since we had earlier missed our flight from Phoenix to Salt Lake City. They had kept the back door open just for us and informed us of the secret place where they had placed our room keys. The hotel folks were very helpful and friendly and I loved our stay here. The hotel is very close to West YellowStone entrance and is in a beautiful small village. We throughly enjoyed our stay here as much as we enjoyed our visit to Yellow Stone.

The next morning, we visited Yellow stone national park. It is one of the most beautiful national park I have ever visited. It is rich in diverse beauty - It had extraordinary Geysers, Hot Springs, Scenic mountains, lakes and good extent of wild life with Grizzly bears, Wolves, Elks, Bison. It also has a Grand Canyon, which we couldn't see since the roads were closed for reconstruction.

NATURE & WILDLIFE

At the first sight of Yellow Stone, I was thrilled at the beauty I saw. A beautiful flowing river in the middle of a lush green forest next to snow capped mountains. I have always imagined this scene & it was right in front of me. I thought it was a great beginning for my 3 day visit to this park. Immediately, I got lucky! At far sight, I spotted couple of wolves running into the forest.

This place has hugeee valleys - Lamar & Hayden. We visited Lamar valley which is the northern most part of this national park. Lamar valley is very rich in wildlife and in the hope of spotting them, we went there close to sunset. It was a long drive to the valley and along the way, we spotted lots of Bison & Elk. All the way, I was hoping for a Bear or a Wolf to cross the road! :) We also saw many wildlife enthusiasts, waiting for hours to spot Bears & Wolves. Most of them carried best in world class binoculars for wildlife spotting. We just believed our naked eyes. I know this is not the best practice. But, I don't own any of those. Anyway, coming back to what exactly I want to say, we were struck by luck. Next to the road, we saw an Elk & a Wolf fighting. A lone wolf tried to attack an Elk. The Elk knowing that only a pack of wolf can be of threat to it, started to charge the wolf. It was an enthralling experience to me. Check out the short video on this (Quality is not good!)



By now, the night had fallen and we started our way back to our hotel. We crossed a high altitude pass which was covered with snow only a week back. The road had been cleared and both the sides were covered with decently high snow walls. Suddenly, the weather got worse and it started snowing. Driving through the snow became difficult and were not sure if our Murano could handle it well. Jomy drove very cautiously at 10 Mph and managed to get out of the pass safely. If only the snowfall had been heavier, we would have got stuck in the pass with no help!



From that night, for the next 2 days, the weather was cloudy. Now & then, sun rays peeked between the clouds and it brought some smile on our face. But, the place was gorgeous and never missed to allure me with its charm. There were several beautiful lakes inside the park and unarguably, Yellowstone Lake was the best. It measures about 135 Sq miles! As the end of winter season brought out sun, we also saw a lake which finally gave up its frozen state.


GEYSERS & HOTSPRINGS

An irresistible attraction of this place is its Stunningly coloured Geysers, Bubbling Mudpots, Hissing Fumaroles & Hot Springs. I have never seen this kind of beauty and it was glorious. This place comprises of more than 10,000 thermal features and in fact, it is about two-third of what is found in the world. The Geyser basins were spread through out the park and offered a great exploration of geothermal features.

The thermal features are at such high temperature that only thermophilic bacterial & algae growth are possible. There were large hot pools which radiated brilliant colors of deep blue & emerald green. The fine particles of silica settled in the water and the intensity of sun rays produced baby blue to deep blue colors. Some of them have orange or yellow colored outline formed by sulphur settlement. I could see other colors like black, dark green which were primarily formed by the algae & bacteria growth.


Many of the geysers here were small, just sputtering & splashing hot water to a height of 10 to 15 feet. It was said that their erupting times are unpredictable. Some of the geysers even have stopped erupting or dead due to human vandalism. Earlier, visitors used to throw coins onto geysers like wishing wells and this had blocked vents of the geysers. Some of the geysers, still managed to find new vents and they are still alive!

There are few Grand geysers which are huge and erupts really high. One of them erupts at regular intervals of 45 to 90mins and is accordingly named as "Old faithful". This can erupt upto a height of 100 feet or so. I watched this erupting continuously for more than 4 minutes. I have edited 4 mins video to 40 sec video. Check it out.



Geothermal features here were splendid, eye-catching and radiant. I was mesmerized by this overwhelming beauty. You can see some of their pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/rshanthi/YellowStoneGrandTeton

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK (6th Jun)

After spending 3 full days at Yellow Stone, we visited Grand Teton national park for a day. In winter, the mountains of Grand Teton is very popular for Skiing. We were here at the end of winter, but the mountains were still full of snow. Large population of Moose is found here and we were informed that it is relatively easy to spot them in this park. I think we had ran out of all our luck - We did not find any. We spent most of the day driving the entire stretch of this amazingly beautiful park.

The same evening, from Grand Teton we drove back to Salt Lake City, to catch our flight to Buffalo, to see the famous Niagara Falls. Check my next posting for rest of my trip update...