People Around Us "Safari Guides"

"KK"

The scorching heat of Central India was quite unbearable in May and sitting in an open gypsy (Jeep) we were quite anxious to quickly get into the Kanha Tiger Reserve safari ride. The previous two rides being unsuccessful in terms of sighting a tiger were weighing down on us and the kids were very eager to have a view of this majestic creature during this safari.

“Uncle who is going to be your guide asked one of them? Hope it is someone who is lucky”. That reminded me of a trip back in 2007 and a similar situation. With two safaris down and last one pending the family was eager to see a tiger in the wild. There came a guide  “KK” (popularly known in Kanha) who guaranteed us a sighting and before the ride was over he fulfilled his promise. Since then we had high regards for KK…but over the next few years we never got a chance to meet KK. This time around, I said to the kids may be it will be “KK” and soon after our driver comes back and mentions “we have the Chottu(small) guide with us”. I knew it was KK and when he appeared there was excitement around in the Gypsy. Rest is history…we had a wonderful sighting of Bhima at the BabaThenga lake in Mukki zone and to everyone’s heart content. Thank you KK.

Guides at Kanha Tiger Reserve,

Well the intent is not to describe my ability to prophesize or our excitement in finally seeing the majestic creature. It’s all about the Ecosystem around Safari parks and how the People around us make the experience good for us. Typically, most of the wildlife/Tiger Reserves are located in remote locations and adjoining a small village or hamlet. There would be a small road leading up-to the gate of the park and one can see a few Dhabas (restaurants), general stores, Handicrafts shops, Memorabilia shops and the Forest department offices. Off course there are the houses of the villagers and then comes the milieu of Resorts and Hotels.

There are many people who work in this eco-system who contribute to your experience. The hotel/resort staff, the shop keepers, the gypsy drivers, the forest staff (rangers, guards etc.) and finally the Safari Guides.  Most of us travel to such places, enjoy things around and come back to the urban jungle. Back there, the life still goes on and it is quite interesting to know & appreciate that there is a certain rhythm to this whole thing. The Tiger reserves operate only for 8 months during the year and between June and October these are closed to tourists. This is a period of emptiness and most of the things probably go back to a dormant mode, only to wake up in late Sept or mid October.

The question that comes to mind “What happens to the people?, “How do they earn their livelihood? “How does the ecosystem survive, that is so dependent on us (tourists)”.  “Why they chose this profession”? Also, what do they think about tourists, the forest, the government etc.

In this series, we would like to introduce you to two such key people i.e. “Safari Guide”, and “Gypsy driver”. The first in the series is an interview with “Neeraj  Pareste”, Safari Guide in Kanha Tiger Reserve.

Finally, we reckon that safari guides like KK, Neeraj, Tomar (all from Kanha), Bhupinder (at Ater), Baney Singh (at Bharatpur National Park), Neelkanth, Shravan, Dashrath (from Tadoba Tiger Reserve) and numerous other are an important part of our lives during such journeys and we owe then a  big thank you...

(Contributed by Enigmatic India team)

Read More

Trip to Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India

We have wanted to visit Kaziranga National Park a UNESCO World Heritage site since a long time and finally it materialized in 2012.

The National Park which is locate in Assam, India(districts of Nagaon and Golaghat) boasts of the Great One-horned Rhinoceros apart from a good population of Tiger, the rare Gibbon, Otters, Wild Water Buffaloes and herds of Elephants. Kaziranga also attracts a lot of migratory birds during the winter season and it is a bird watcher’s paradise. The Park has a very diverse land conditions of alluvial soils, swamps/wetlands, grass lands(elephant grass) and it crisscrossed by many rivers including the mighty Brahmaputra and the lesser know Diphlu. The park has three ranges – Central range(most popular) called the Kohora, Eastern Range called Agartoli, Western Ranges –Burra Pahad and Baghori.

We checked into the Diphlu River Lodge, which lies near the Baghori gate and on the banks of the river Diphlu. You can make both Elephant and Jeep Safaris, however the elephant safaris are operated in the Central Range by the Forest department and in the Western (Baghori) by Private operators.

We made trips to all the four ranges and each one of them was quite diverse –

 a. Central Range(Kohora) most popular, has most resorts close to the gate boasts of the elephant safari which is majestic. You can take an one hour ride on elephant back into the tall grasslands and bound to see Rhinos, Swamp and Hog Deer, water buffalo and other animals. The only drawback of this range is that due to its popularity, lots of vehicles are inside and the day we went there were 100+ gypsies inside. The popular Iora Retreat Resort is in this range.

b. Eastern Range(Agartoli) – quite far from the Central spot and has an Assam Tourism resort at the entrance of the gate. We enjoyed this range a lot as it has a 30 + kms drive and if you are bird watcher it is definitely a paradise. Huge expanse of water bodies dot the landscape and it was enjoyable.
c. Western Range(Baghori) – similar to the central range in all aspects and the jeep safari drive is a smaller one. Resorts like United 21 Grasslands, Wild Grass and Diphlu river lodge are closer to this.
d. Western Range(Burra Pahad) – We enjoyed this quite a lot with the landscape changing to tall trees in addition to other grass lands etc. You can get a chance to see the Gibbon and also the Malayan Giant Squirrel in this range apart from other things. Resorts like the GL resorts, Grasslands etc are near this range.

One interesting this compared to any other national parks we visited was that you needed a gunman as escort in your vehicle to help ward of the dangerous herbivores….Rhino, Elephants and Wild Water Buffaloes.

Overall, it was worth spending three days at Kaziranga

Read More

Trip to Tadoba Tiger Reserve(TATR) - June 2007

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 :-)

Read More

Trip to Bandipur Tiger Reserve, Karnataka

After the Kanha trip we decided to move down South and explore the Bandipur Tiger Reserve during January 2007.( I am blogging quite late on this...as usual didnot find time enough to do so.)

Shreya(my 4 yr old daughter) was excited and so was I. We reached Bangalore and decided to drive down to Bandipur alongwith Vinod and his family. Prior to going there, we tried our best to get the hotel bookings done through Jungle Lodges(http://www.junglelodges.com/) one of the best places to be in Karnataka, however rooms were running full. Somehow we managed a place called MC Resorts closer to the park. MC resorts (08229-233044/5 and 299217) is a neat place with cottages at a reasonable rates.

The day we reached, we were late for the evening rounds and hence we decided to drive down to the TN side of the forest i.e. Madhumalli range. We were just in time for the bus trip...a rickety bus with hardly any leg space. As we trugged along we saw wild boar, peafowl, spotted deer, sambhar and a herd of elephants bathing in a waterhole. The elephants charged at the bus and we moved on. We came back to the TN forest counter to check for the elephant ride and to our utter surprise, the elephant ride gets booked at Ooty office...strange ways of the government.

We returned to our resort and decided to have a camp fire outside our room. Spent a long time till about midnight enjoying the food and drink. The children enjoyed watching the fire.

Next day morning we got up at 5:00 a.m. and rushed to the forest reservation counter to book the gypsy...there were only three of them and it seemed all were booked by foreigners by paying an amount of Rs.2000 for 1&1/2 hours. Disappointed we decided to take yet another bus ride. Wintery cold morning and we did not hope to see many animals - landed up seeing some kingfisher, sambar, wild boar and bison.



We decided to move on and drove back to Bangalore. We missed out on seeing a tiger...however the experience was good. I will be back in Bandipur sometime for a better viewing and experience.

Read More