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Enigmatic India

This blog captures the life experiences of the Enigmatic India team in the beautiful and enigmatic country of India.We capture our experiences through our writings, photos and products that depict the very essence and fabric of India.Through this platform, we invite you to join us in our journey as we explore.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Trip to Kanha National Park

Its been months since I wrote something...as usual "lack of time" was the culprit. In the meanwhile even Blogger moved from Beta to the tested one.

Well the new year 2007(which is now two months old already) have been a good one till date and I have started to accomplish some of my dreams. One of them was to connect with Nature and we as a family decided to explore more and more.

Kanha was one such place that always has fascinated me - reading about it. We decided to set our course for this beautiful place sometime in mid January. As we searched for various options the best we could find was one from the MadhyaPradesh tourism and its Resident Manager Deepika promised us that the package was worth investing.

So we set forth on our journey from Hyderabad to Kanha via Nagpur...We landed at Nagpur and went to a hotel Orange City(in the middle of the city market) it is not a upmarket hotel...the room were okay and under renovation. For Rs.1000 a night it was not worth the money.

The next day we set forth in a Qualis to Kanha enroute Pench(another tiger reserve). The journey for most part okay with an exciting stop at a dhaba which was run by an entertaining Bihari gentleman who served us with hot pakoras.

Reached Kanha around 2:00 p.m, grabbed our lunch and proceeded for our first round of the park. our guide was Salim and driver Naresh for the trip. The whole set-up is so professional....a computer generate which route you willget andwho will be your guide. We started wonderfully with a fully grown Barasingha, followed by spotted deers, two serpent eagles, owlet, wild boar and two sloth bears. However the tiger eluded us. Since everything depended on nature unlike a zoo scenario we were okay with it.

Day2 - morning trip started at 6:00 a.m. and the temperature was around 4 degrees...previous night we managed to buy monkey caps from the local village. Since it was two cold for a 5 hrs trip it was disappointing...we did hearthe warning calls of the monkeys and spotted deer. At one of point of time there is an event called "elephant show". Early in the morning three batches of elephants and mahouts are dispatched in three directions, Kanha, Kisli and Mukki to spot tigers. Once spotted they surrond the tiger and then visitors are allowed to go on elephant back to see the tigers from as close as 50 mts. We lined up for this in Mukki and rushed to the spot...however the great animal decided to elude us that day too(we got our money refunded as is the practice) so a disappointing morning ended. We set forth in our afternoon trip and did manage to see parakeets, tree pie, bablers, red wattled lapwing, coots, waterhen, lots of deer, barasinga, wild boarand a beautiful peafowl dance. The tiger was not spotted however we waited in couple of places for more than an hours as some of the other tourists seem to have spotted one. As we were moving out of the park, we saw alarge numberr of vehicle crowded at one place and people literally fighting to get a view...we knew our search has ended for the elusive Indian Tiger and there we saw two of them playing in a small ravine kind of place...however at the better spots were taken away by our visiting athithis i.e. foreigners.

Day3 - we had the last round of the park and departed for Nagpur to head back home.

It was a beautiful experience to connect with Nature at its best...the staff at the MPtourism guesthouse were too good, our driver Shankar & Naresh and our guide KK were the perfect hosts.

We promised to visit Kanha again in April and soon you will be seeing another posting here.

Some photograhs from our visit


(Indian Bison) (Barasingha)

(Dead Bamboo) (Early morning wait)
(Infront of cottage) (on the jeep)

(The dhaba) (all expecting me)

(Red Lapwing) (unknown Spider)

(the pristine forest) (the pristine forest)

(Ghost tree-dawn) (Ghost tree-close to noon)

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