In Mowgli's Land: Pench National Park

I can barely be called a Blogger with just a single post in over four years.  Though I love reading and writing somehow there wasn't enough push in me to put things together but this time there is this sudden rush in me to write about this place quickly before I forget the details. I hope this post will inspire you to travel to this beautiful national park. Finally if you are looking for 'fun read' this post may lack any artistic writing with only technical details as to how to do, plan and what to expect.

My husband being an animal lover, we have been to lot of wild places. I mean really wild, without electricity with unknown species of spiders and big big bugs giving us company on bed. His idea of short escape is only forests in and around South India. We have been to same places over and over again.  Initially it was interesting later it became sort of boring for me. This time I was looking out for options away from south. Little googling lead me to Kanha national park, a tiger paradise. But safari in this park need at least two months prior booking. For a Tiger Enthusiast, Pench national park comes way below Kanha, Bandavgarh, Ranthambore, Tadoba, and JimCorbett. Since we had little time to plan and not so 'Tiger crazy' we settled for Pench. Little did we know about our lucky stars.😉

Little History

Pench National Park, named after Pench river which cuts across the park, is in the border between Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra about 100Kms from Nagpur. Rudyard Kipling based his story of Jungle Book from this forest. According to local lore, a boy named Mowgli, brought up by a herd of wolves was found in the Sant Bawadi village. Kipling read about this description of a boy and based his story on that.

                                                                                

     

After fixing your trip dates, first thing you need to plan is your safaris. There are two safaris available in a day, morning and evening. There are different gates to enter the park. Bookings can be made directly to these gates through this website https://forest.mponline.gov.in/ 

For Maharashtra gates www.mahaecotourism.gov.in/

Madhya Pradesh Gates

• Touria Gate
• Karmajhiri Gate
• Jhamtara Gate

Maharashtra Gates  

• Sillari
• Khursapar
• Kolitmaara
• Chorbahuli
• Surewani

It will cost you around Rs.1500 for a full jeep permit which has a capacity of 6 plus driver and guide. Apart from this you need to pay Rs.2000 as Gypsy charges and Rs.360/500 as guide charges. You can hire a gypsy at entry of the gate. Here is where the catch is...The resort guys will insist you to hire a gypsy from their resort itself as the gates are 5-10kms from the resort and their rates are not standard. It depends upon your bargaining capacity. Choose your resort wisely something closer to the gate will save some money.The most popular ones are Touria gate in MP and Khursapar gate in Maharastra. The routes of Touria gate and Karmajhiri gates are same except the start points are opposite. Whichever gate you enter it is the same park.

Coming back to our trip, We planned a three day, two night short trip from 28th, May till 30th, May. We flew to Nagpur and from there took a Zoom Car and drove it to Pench. The roads were fantastic the only problem we had was the scorching sun with temperatures soaring up to 42C. Zoom car costed us around Rs.5300 on a week day. If you ask the resort for an Innova they would quote something around Rs.7000 for up and down.

The Resort

We had booked ourselves in a resort called Mahua Vann resort deriving its name from the very popular tree of Central India, Mahua or Illupai Maram in Tamil. The rooms were spacious and had courteous staff

On the evening of 28th we had a safari from Kharmajhiri gate, as it was 70kms from the gate and we didn't have enough time to cover it up we changed it to Touria gate by paying some additional money at the entry. The temperatures were still high at 38C even at 3.30pm in the evening and I was cursing myself why did we have to do it in this summer. If you are planning a trip in summer buy head scarfs which can cover your head as well nose as the dust levels are pretty high. You can get one in Decathalon

Super mom

Whenever I'm traveling I read a little about the subject of interest in that place. Here it was Tiger. The most famous tiger in this park is a female called Collarwali, she was radio collared sometime back. Together with her sister and two brothers she grew up under the spotlight from a BBC programme, ‘Spy in the Jungle’ series. She is the queen of this jungle

 

What is so special about her? Why is she a Super Mom? This 13 year old and has littered 7 times with 26 cubs and 3-4 cubs in each litter. The highest for any to have raised so many cubs to adulthood successfully. she is praised for her choice of dens, the capability to defend her cubs from male tigers and hunting skills to feed her cubs when they are still young. My expectations soared up high and I was looking forward eagerly for the safaris. Our first safari had a female guide and she was quiet knowledgeable of flora and fauna. Through out our trip safari drivers were a little disappoint for us. Their only motive is to show guests tigers and only tigers so they madly rushed us around usual spots. I missed photographing quiet a lot of beautiful birds. On our first day we saw lot of Langurs and Spotted Deers. There is an interesting agreement between them. Wherever you see a herd of Spotted deer there will also be a Langur group. These monkeys when they are up in the trees they alert the deer on ground of approaching danger and when they are down the deers with their excellent sense of smell alert the monkeys. No wonder the tigers hunting success rate is as low as 5-10%

Ghosts in the forest

These forests have a special tree called Ghost tree or Kullu in Hindi. The color of the tree changes every season. In Summer it is white in color looking like a Ghost without any leaves. Usually around these spots Leopards are sighted as these trees always perch upon a rock and gives better visibility for Leopards because of the height.

We concluded our safari with two lonely Jackals and nothing much. I was disappointed as I didn't get to see Tigers and even sighting of birds couldn't be done as the driver was madly behind the tigers. There is this usual ritual when you come back from safari, people ask you "did you have any sightings"? If you are a first timer you will be puzzled. By sighting they don't mean sightings of birds or any other animals, its always tigers. When we came back to the resort we had same questions from elated fellow travelers who had just seen a tiger from the Maharashtra side of gate. She even consoled me saying you won't miss a tiger in Khursapar gate. My disappointment was different. I was not able to enjoy the forest or anything else in search of this elusive animal.

Fateful Day:29th May

Today before our Safari we told our Guide and Driver that we are keen on not just tiger sightings but also other birds and animals This time we got a senior guide and were alloted route number 2. I kept my expectation of tiger low and was looking forward to get the feel of the forest. 

Little into the forest we saw a Leopard crossing our gypsy and going over a rock. Leopards are very shy, secretive and most difficult to be spotted. We didn't have a minute, to film it in our camera but enjoyed the moment. 

We had opportunity to sight lot of colorful birds. Indian rollers, Treepies, Kingfisher, Black Drongos, Bee eaters, Blue Throated Flycatcher, Parakeets and plenty of Peacocks.

There were also two wild dogs playing near a patrol shelter. Heard from our guide that Indian Wild Dogs are one of the endangered species whose population have become lesser than tiger population. These animals hunt in a pack and can even bring down a big Gaur 

 It was 9am in the morning, and was pretty much like 1pm in afternoon. we halted near a waterhole and were taking pictures of wildlife around the waterhole. All animals were at peace. Guide pretty much gave up on sighting a Tiger. He said it would have come early morning and have gone back deep inside forest. I was calm, enjoying the solitude of the jungle. 

Is it rain drops? No Honey dew!!!

As we were watching, one or two droplets of water fell on me. I thought wow its going to rain, but still the sun was high up and no signs of rain clouds anywhere. The guide explained it was defecation of an insect called cicadas which doesn't have any bum and pee when they fly. Yuck!!!😒 and these droplets were called Honey dew and to our much relief the liquid is just a tree sap.

Show Stopper

While we were still near the waterhole suddenly there was this strange grunting sound from nowhere and all animals along the water body ran to safety. Ahh.. its the Tiger!!!

There she emerged out of bushes. Our driver parked the gypsy near a vantage point. and for another 20 minutes there was just shutter sound. 

Guide identified her as Langdi one of the sisters of Collarwali. She is called Langdi as she has birth deformity in her right leg. As she walked she was calling out on her cubs. It looked like saying main yahaan hoon. She did not shy from so many vehicles parked, like a king waiting to be adorned walked passed us bravely and went into the water.

I was praising my lucky stars. When we returned back from safari, the naturalist of the resort asked me did you have any sightings, immediately  I said "Yes", "not just Tiger, we saw  Leopard, Bison, Wild Dogs, Plenty of birds all in one Safari". He exclaimed, "you missed a Sloth Bear". "I will save it for next time", I said

That evening we had safari from Jhamtara gate. it was 70km drive to the gate. This side of the forest is beautiful. We saw white necked Nilgai. 

The next day we had booked safari from Maharashtra gate. The forest looks different across the border. Still the leaves were green. Plenty of male tigers this side of which BMW and Handsome were huge and most popular. As it was park holiday the day before, the guides were finding difficult to track the movement of tigers. we didn't see any in this trip. We were told this forest has less alarming calls. They say the tiger can emerge from nowhere. With this our trip concluded and we headed back to Bangalore

I highly recommend Pench, if you are a nature lover. Don't over do safaris like us, do only one safari on a day take your time and enjoy. Though there are currently 55 tigers residing in this forest do look in for other animals and birds too.

Recommended books

 

 If you love stories then here is this....