Our First Long Road Trip - Part II

Continuing the account of our Road Trip into MP:

Day 8: We commenced for Chilphi enjoying the smooth broad roads of Chattisgarh and scarce traffic on the highway. We were feeling lucky that with all the adventures of Kanger Valley behind us, this seemed such a God given relief. Close to about 10:30 a.m. we saw the first signpost that we were approaching the border of Chattisgarh & MP. We drove on for half an hour and were soon greeted with a large archway proclaiming “Welcome to Madhya Pradesh”. A kilometer down the highway, the smooth road transformed to semi-repaired roads with freshly laid granite stones. Instinctly we could feel the strain on the tyres. The road was leading into the jungles and ghats and we wondered if we were on the right path. Suddenly the road worsened to a typical jungle trail – only stones and mud. Somewhere we saw a jackal run by. We continued to drive on and the continuous jolting also increased the pressure on our bladders. At the back of our minds was the hope that the shellac seal would not give way. An hour later, we passed by a lone cyclist and we stopped to reconfirm the route or seek alternate routes. The youngster mentioned that this was the only route towards Mandla and this jarring stretch would continue for another 50 kms! Our hearts sank and the physical discomfort was becoming unbearable. What should have been covered in an hours drive, took us 2 & ½ hours. At Anjania, where we were to take the detour towards Kanha, we stopped to inspect the state of the vehicle and also take a bio break. What a relief it was!

We drove on till we came upon 2 routes to Kanha. One was a 30 km route to Mukki gate and the other, a 120km route to Kisli gate. Since our resort was at Kisli, we chose to take the longer route, only to realize later that we could have taken the road to Mukki gate and driven through the park itself. It would have been much shorter! Checked into the resort and slept like a log!
Day 9 – 11: The next three days were spent in safaris in the morning and afternoon, followed by nature walks in the evening. Our resort, Wild Chalet Resort was a beautiful one by the side of the river Banjar. Tiger sighting was done through the “Tiger Show”. Honestly, I would have preferred to leave the animal alone and see it only if it crossed our way. But since my wife had not seen a tiger in the wild, we went along with the show. It was the most irritating way of enjoying a sighting. Loud cackles of the tourists, more than 50 jeeps around the site creating a big ruckus, and finally 4 elephants that were ferrying the tourists to the spot and back, surrounding the poor animal. Even at the spot, instead of maintaining silence, most of the tourists insisted on having conversations as though they were on a picnic. The tiger, a full grown one, had just finished its meal of a sambar and was beginning to get irritated with the continuous interruption to its siesta.
We quickly did the touristiest thing of taking photos quickly and made our way back. Never again, will we ever indulge in this mockery of a sighting called “Tiger Show”. We sighted a fair amount of wildlife, the barasingha, wolf, jackals, a host of various birds etc. We also heard the mating calls of the tiger - tigress across the maidan at Kanha. Again there was a mad scramble and a jamboree of vehicles converged to the same spot where the likely sighting could happen. We stayed for about 15 minutes and moved on, not wanting to be party to the crowd.

Day 12: Onwards from Kanha, we drove past Dindori and came across a Fossil Park. This piqued our interest and we explored the Ghughwa Fossil Park. We were the only tourists there that day and so the guide had all the time in the world to show us around. The park spread over 24.417 hectares had fossils of various trees and were dated more than 6.5 Cr years old.
It is believed that most of the trees belonged to the coconut / palm variety which once grew near a major water body. These during certain violent earthquakes and volcanic activity had got covered with the lava and thus turned into fossils. There were interesting fossils of a beehive, leaves, insects as well.
An hour later we were approaching the Umaria gate of Bandhavgarh and we checked into Tiger Trails resort. The experience at the resort was a mixed one. While the facilities were good and care was taken to provide nice hot water bags to keep us warm at night, the sheer over-hospitality being shown to the foreigners at the cost of other tourists was a complete put off. Our take was that finally, tourists coming to stay at the resort are paying the full tariffs. While we do understand that resorts make more money off foreigners, it is unfair to shortchange us by not giving us exclusive safari vehicles especially when we had paid for them. This was the sore point in the whole trip.

Day 13-15: As we entered the park the next day, every guide we came across was confident about a definite sighting of the tiger. This was so because Bandhavgarh being a smaller park had similar or slightly more numbers of the tiger as compared to Kanha. Our luck however decided otherwise and during our entire stay there, we never really got to see the majestic animal. We utilized one of the mornings to trek up the Bandhavgarh fort. We reached the base of the fort on top of the hill and were greeted by a 35 feet reclining statue of Lord Vishnu known as “Shesha Shaya”. Onwards as we huffed and puffed our way to the top, we came across imposing statues of the various incarnations of Lord Vishnu. We were some distance away from the temple when our guide spotted fresh pug marks and tiger scat on the pathway. He immediately warned us that the animal could be lurking around and if we were lucky, we would be able to spot it. It immediately psyched us and the all pervasive smell of rotten kill played with our nerves. As we cautiously approached the temple, the priest mentioned that just a day before a tiger had killed a sambar and the remains were somewhere behind the temple. The tiger was a regular visitor!

It was hot and sweaty as the sun blazed into the ground and we made our way to one of the natural spring fed pools. It was a mossy lake with high walls of rock around. Roots of the banyan trees snaked down the walls giving the whole place a haunted look. We moved away with our spines tingling due to either a feeling of probably being watched over or the sheer trepidation of coming face to face with the King of the Jungle. On our return, as we shared our experience with the other guides at the gate, they felt bad that we had not been able to get even one sighting during our whole stay. (Our trips to Tadoba & Pench later on separate trips more than made up for this non-sighting! More about those encounters in later blogs)

Day 16: We moved on to Jabalpur from Bandhavgarh where we spent the afternoon and evening cruising along Narmada, marveling at the marble rocks at Bhedaghat. The mist and the gushing waters were a sight to behold. It is said that these are even more beautiful on a moonlit night. Maybe some night we would be able to see that too!

Day 17: Today we were returning to Nagpur and as we drove down the highway, we decided to cut short the drive at Nagpur as we had done more than 2500 kms and had to resume work back at Mumbai. We soon arranged for a driver to meet us Nagpur and drive the vehicle back to Mumbai while we took the flight back the next day.

Truly this was our First Long Road trip and definitely not the last!

PS: The Wagon-R having weathered all this, has been in perfect condition till we sold it off this year.