Well the family have been bitten by the nature bug and we decided to continue our quest for experiences with nature. This time around, we decided to visit Maharashtra's Tadoba Tiger reserve, part of the Project Tiger initiative. (http://projecttiger.nic.in/tadoba.htm). Located in the Chandrapur district it lies off the NH7. I had done an online booking through the Maharastra tourism(http://www.maharashtratourism.gov.in/) at Tadoba. Another interesting place to stay in a posh private resort called Tiger Trails(http://www.tigertrails.in/). The forest department also operates rest houses which need to be booked from Chandrapur,Field Director, 0712-2528953(O)
We started from Hyderabad early morning and took the NH7 to Nagpur. On the way we crossed Medchal, Tupram, Ramyapet, Dichapally, Armur, Nirmal, Adilabad, Bori, Pankharwada and then took a right near Karanji. By mistake we went to Warora and Wani thinking of approaching through Pirli. Howevver, people at Warora advised us to go to Chandrapur and then go to Tadoba. We lost some time in the process. We reached Moharli the village on the outskirts of Tadoba and checked into our guesthouse, just in time i.e. around 3:45 p.m. to be able to rush the evening round of the park.
One could take his/her own vehicle into the park and there were only 4 open gypsies available i.e. 2 with MTDC(Maharastra Tourism) and 2 through private operators. Since we were late, I had to drive around in our Esteem. We first visited the Tadoba lake and bingo saw the Marsh Crocodile and Open billed Stork. Also, saw the spotter deer, wild boar etc and the light started
fading. We decided to come back to the guest house.Had our dinner and decided to sleep as yet another exciting day was there to explore. As thenight progressed, our room became an entomologist dream come true. We found ourselves swarmed with almost 400 insects of different kinds. My daughter Shreya was jumping up and down. We realized we had kept a tube light on near our entrance which attracted all these tiny creatures of the night.
The next day we managed an open Gypsy for almost 2000 Rs for the whole day and had lot of exciting moments - Saw the Oriole, Paradise Flycatcher, bulbul, eagles, hawk, peafowl, monitor lizard, sambhar, barking deer, Ibis, Egrets, Tree Pies, Wild boar and innocent looking deer. The great tiger still eluded us and theonly solace was that during the last three days noone had sighter the king of the Indian Jungle.
On Monday morning we had planned to move back to Hyderabad. However, Madhu and I decided to take one last round of the park and were lucky we did so...we spotted the Nilgai,
elusive wild dogs, peafowl enjoying a dance and the male version of the paradise flycatcher...beautiful white color bird.
We all enjoyed the trip and want to visit again sometime in October...however my daughter has promised not to visit the insect ridden room again :-)
Oh man! We did experience the insect-infested room too :(
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