We started off with our first trip, the evening short trip of the day we reached. Since we are staying two nights we will be getting a chance to visit the park 4 times in all. Generally the evening trips are short and by the way kind and real safari is the morning trips which generally last from early 5:30am to about 11:30am kind, six hours in the jungle, even though it might sound like a lot actually you won’t know it with the excitement of seeing animals and jungle.
We took the first evening trip, next morning and the following evening trip to the park, the 3rd day morning we decided to drive around the park periphery villages, buffer zone and check out on some shopping opportunity if any.
In the above mentioned trips we got to see great amount of forest, several kinds of wild animals from Gaur (Indian bison), Wild bore, Dhole (Indian wild dog), Barasingah (rare swamp deer), sambar, Neel Gai, multiple different birds like racket tailed drongo, shikra, BlueJ, peacock, Brahminy Kite; other then lots of regular wild life like chital deer, monkey and wild fouls. Not to forget we also got to see 4 tigers in all, isn’t that wonderful, who would have expected all this in such a short trip without going to a zoo.
The forest authorities tries to put some control and system to manage things better, yes ‘tries’, yet every time they try anything good they just end up making the process burocratic and difficult and in the process the main purpose gets lost somewhere. Can’t imagine this organization is managed by some of the brightest minds in the country, infact some of my classmates from engineer college joined the IFS, don’t really understand what make the department so inefficient on simple no-brainer things. Ok the reason for my ranting above is, what we faced every day while entering the park, huge line to just get the ticket while paying and entering. Imagine waking up very early in the morning like 4:30am, rushing to get ready and just on to the jeep with wonderful light and climate around hoping to enter the park and see the early morning views. What you get at the gate is huge line sometime several hundred meters long with all kind of people waiting from 20 to 45minutes after the park has opened. They allocate random routes in the park which most of them don’t follow after first hour or so chasing the news on tiger sighting.
What are the efficient forest officers doing about the issues above, well, turning a blind eye to this huge line and inefficiency they are busy touring political leaders and there friends with personal escort. Great now that I have said it may be they will ban me from the park next time saying I am danger to the animals or something like that.
Not that every thing is bad, but as I felt it, probably other then the efforts of park officials and guards the greatest factor that has saved what ever tiger and animals there is the efforts of the local population. Other then believing all lives are sacred as per hindu believes they also see that the prosperity of this remote region is greatly dependent on Tourism money and they cant go too far by killing the golden goose or golden tiger. Hope more of them see it that way.
To me probably one way to conserve the park would be to get sponsors like Microsoft and Cisco to pay and also put technology to make the protection efforts more efficient. The odds are huge today of guarding some thousands of sq. km of forest in very difficult territories with less then few hundred guards paid barely 50 to 80 USD per month. Can you imagine that.
Anyways going back to the fun part, what were the highlights of this trip, let me bullet point them first:
- sighting of the tiger couple mating on the early mornings of second day, best part was since we discovered it ourselves, thanks to our naturalist Sanjay and Driver Raju, it was only us and another jeep who was at the scene watching them for about good 30 minutes or so, even though it was like 500 meters away. Not the best for photography but what the heck.
- Even though I don’t like the idea of elephant ride to view the tiger that has been arranged for spotting by the forest guards, it was an experience to be about 20 feet from the majestic animal looking straight into our eye and when it gave some kind of expression that can be best interpreted as ‘what the heck do you want?’
- Ride through the new part of the forest, just opened for tourist. Even though we did not see much of big games, it was an experience since the animals from that area was least accustomed to human and there reaction was very different then those in the main tourist zone.
- Sighting of the Dhole, wild dog, by Kunchi while the driver, guide and naturalist missed it, and casually saying that animal must be a fox with bushy tail, listening to that every one jumped and on following his lead found out a whole pack of Dhole crossing the road.
- And not so much of fondly but can still remember the HUGE line of jeeps in the evening by the kanha meadows waiting for one poor tigress hiding in some place under a small stone/bridge. Huge line of some 50 or more keeps waiting till sunset and when the animal would run away and visitors would get a glimpse of the tiger, thus taking off the pressure from the guide and naturalist of the responsibility of showing what most of them come to see.
- Also liked the drive around the buffer zone on the last day, checking out how the people leaves around and the visit to one of my professors property where he has lots of dream projects to come.
Actually it might be bit anticlimactic to make the safari description short then the preparation, but isn’t it that way in most things in life. Beside its quite beyond words to share the real feeling that you get by visiting a park like kanha. I have been to several of them in different countries from Australia to US etc. and its rarely like how it is at Kanha; its untouched mostly, no metal road, minimal clearing of forest growth, letting most of the fallen trees go through natural cycle and same with the dead animals. Its preserved from the word ‘P’. let me list the things that comes to my mind about the drive through the park:
- cool breeze
- smell of jungle, so fresh mixed with saal, mahua and other unknown
- silence from human related noise other then some from the extra silenced jeep; but the noise of the forest when you stop and listen, the birds, the calls of jungle animal like saambar, chital, monkey or some bird warning everyone of there sighting of predator like tiger or leopard.
- And the feeling; feeling that you are being watched by so many animal who we cant see because of our blunted natural sense from city living. They say 10 tigers have seen you before you spot one, imagine that.
Hope by now i have been able to share some of the experience and raised your appitite for a trip to some place similar if not kanha in the near future.
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arupmaity/sets/72157604411078170/