Bandhavgarh Tour
Our guide got a call from his fellow guide and he signed the
driver. “Sahab, baith jaeeye humein
nikalna hai’ (Sir, please sit down, we need to move) said our gypsy driver in a
very low voice. We all kind of dropped into our seats and the gypsy moved at
very fast pace, taking sharp turns, we reached a spot where there were other gypsys
waiting in a pin drop silence. 
;
;
Only voices of birds, spotted Deer and may be
also barking Deer could be heard. And there he was at a distance we saw a
stripped body lying on the ground in the bushes. She moved stood up and gave us
some photo shots.
This was our first ride into the Bandhavgarh forest, we had
the photos of tiger. We could not identify the tiger but it was a grown up male.
Bandhavgarh, is a fort and a forest surrounding it. The area
is 105 sq km, fairly small compared some other forests or aka national parks.
This is part of the government of India’s Project
Tiger movement. Bandhavgarh houses some 65 tigers in total but the majority
of the area is under core zone, which means vehicles are not allowed to go into
that area. It is very important to be lucky as for the tourist the tiger
spotting areas are limited.
We started our journey of 18
hours of train ride from Pune to Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. This period being the
festival of Holi, we had tough time getting rail tickets. Generally in India
getting train ticket itself is an adventure. This was my first journey on rail
after 1996! On reaching Jabalpur our mini bus was waiting to take us to the resort
called Bandhavgarh meadows. It took us 200+ KM and 5 hours ride.
There are three sections of the
park viz. Tala (the main village), Khatauli and Magadhi. Tala is supposed to be
the premium zone for the tiger sighting. Our resort was about Dutch 5 minutes’
drive away, I say Dutch because Indian 5 minutes can mean half an hour as well.
We had booked four rides in the
park, one in the morning and one in the evening per day. Morning ride was 4
hours and evening was 3 hours. After reaching the hotel, we had dinner and
retired early to bed as we were supposed to get up at 4:30 AM. Next morning at
5:30 AM we all 11 of us were ready and got into our two Maruti gypsy, reached
the main gate of Tala section.
This is interesting, when I say it
is a gate then I mean just an arch with forest officers noting down the numbers
of the ID proofs of each tourist. Around the gate there is nothing for a fence.
The gate is only meant for the cars to get into the national park. (I am using
national park, tiger reserve, forest to mean same thing). The gypsy driver is banned from entering the
park if he (it is always a He) misses to come out of the park on time to the
last minute.
When we entered the park we were greeted by
elephants and a mahout and wondering why they were there, we moved on. Watching
along the herds of the spotted deer, Sambar Deer, peacocks and even we saw wild
bore, walking around with the smaller ones. Chirping birds like magpie robin,
bulbul, Leap birds were in abundance. We
always had a guide who would give us information about the flora and fauna of
the forest. We crossed a gypsy who told us that they had just seen an Asian
black bear. We rushed as usual to the
spot. We could have glimpses of the bear as it is a shy animal and prefers
mountains and dense forested areas.
After the first ride’s drama of
the tiger and bear spotting, we got out in time from the forest at 10AM. On
reaching the hotel/resort we got into critique of our photos by each other and
our photography experts. After brunch some retired back to the bed J or went for birding.
We were ready again at around
1:30 for light lunch and went for second ride of the day for three hours in the
same section.
When tiger is passing the herds
of Deer flees the area, this is no brainer, but they also make specific alarm
call to alert others of the presence of the tiger. We were on our Tiger trail
and saw pugmarks going in the opposite direction. We turned back and we saw
group of pugmarks one of a grown up tigress and others of cubs. So it was a
mother taking her children on a walk. But then the cubs’ pugmarks disappeared
but grown up pugmarks were still there at a distance. This was an indication
that the cubs were kept in the hills somewhere safe and the mother tiger was
out on hunt. She would make a kill and come back to pick her kids up.
One forest employee helped us
locate the cubs but they were in not motor able area and we were not supposed
to step down the vehicle. Also we could/should not disturb the cubs, which were
2-3 years old. That is pretty big to harm anyone.
Suddenly the car stopped and
driver and guide were asked us to shut up and they were listening to the alarm
calls of the spotted deer. We followed the sound and came to a place where we
could see a spotted deer wooing a female. This is also a mating season in the
jungle. But then we asked the driver why would a male deer make a tiger alarm
call to woo the female, Instead of mating call which is distinctively
different? The answer was he has been eating too much of Mahua fruit
(intoxicating forest fruit which when dried up and fermented make highly
alcoholic disgusting drink, extremely common in the tribal areas), and now has
confused the mating call with the tiger call! Men will be men J
Next morning, we heard spotted
deer making an alarm call, and we followed it to see around 4 to 5 gypsys were
waiting for the tiger or specifically Tigress. We parked our vehicle in such a
way that the bush (Bamboo) was on our left around 5 meters from where we stood.
This area was called Bodha Talao, We heard two spotted deer being chased by the
tigress. One went to the Hillock and other ran just behind our vehicle crossing
the path we were parked on. Our camera lenses were pointing to the exit of the
bushes thinking that the tigress would follow the spotted deer. The tigress
would have been something like few feet away from us. But nothing came out of
the bush and we waited for good 15 minutes, in vain. We got information about
other tiger in Bhulbhulaya, another part in the national park. Our second group
who crossed us on our way to Bhulbhulaya went to Bodha Talao to check on the
tigress and we went to Bhulbhulaya.
The tigress, we thought went to
hillock to get the other deer, was actually in the bushes itself. Either we
were over confident or just simple greedy for tiger sighting, but then again we
could not walk into the bushes to check if the tigress was there or had gone to
chase the Deer. This tigress, after some time decided to walk towards the same
direction as we went but through the bushes and one point she had to cross the
road and it was the same road on which our second vehicle was passing and they
got a perfect sighting of the next prince of Bandhavgarh!
We were little disappointed but
at the same time happy about the fact that our other colleagues could see the
tiger from such a small distance. Our colleagues were saddened by the fact that
we could not see the tiger. They tried to call us but unfortunately the mobile
network in the jungle is not always available when you need it.
We checked the photos and it was
a magnificent tigress, we chatted on the dinner table, checked the photos and
received critique for our photos. The chatting continued to the camp fire where
experienced people in our group told us tales of the tigers from different
national parks then night went on. Who knows may be a tiger or two were
listening to the chatter we were having and may be feeling glad that not all
humans are bad and they also love tigers.
All said I went to bed with tiger
on my mind, in my dreams and then in my thoughts for a very long time to come!
Thanks for stopping by!
Be cool, stay lucky!
Rahul Nene
