Kanha morning drive then onto Pench
17th February 2018 – Kanha game drive and transfer to Pench
Mum was convinced that having seen tigers once we would now
get a bonanza of sightings this morning so talked us all into going for another
game drive. I wrapped myself from head
to toe in a blanket today leaving just a slit for one eye to peer out of and
this was definitely the warmest way to travel – I’ve cracked it!
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| Female Gaur or Indian Bison. |
We went into a different part of the park which was very
attractive scenery – more tropical and steeper terrain with huge clumps of
bamboo towering above us. Since both of
our tiger spotting have been in more open terrain I was a bit sceptical about
seeing tigers today. I was unfortunately
proved right as actually, we didn’t see much at all. We saw a gaur (large cow) on the road and a
male samba deer with his harem of females wading in some water, but that was
about it. Parat was most apologetic as
he said that normally we should have seen more tigers than we had, but in all
honesty I’d rather have had the 2 fantastic quality sightings that we did than
5 vague blobs in the distance.
We stopped for breakfast at a large rangers centre in the
forest which had very upmarket toilet facilities. A lady in a sari ushered me inside and
pointed to a western style stall on the left and before I entered insisted on
wiping the seat with a cloth and flushing the loo first. There was even a wash basin with running
water and soap. This beats the loo on
the first day which consisted of 2 bricks about a foot apart surrounded by a
grass screen with an ill fitting palm leaf door to hide your modesty.
There was also a huge arch made of various deer antlers that
was very striking. In the old days, the
villagers used to set fire to the forest to clear the undergrowth so that they
could collect the antlers and make things out of them. This practice has now been stopped as the
deer and porcupines actually eat the antlers to absorb some of the calcium they lose in
growing them.
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| Antler arch. |
After a shower and some lunch on our balcony, we departed for
Pench National Park which is about a 3-4 hour drive away. Our driver was from the” hoot your horn as
many times as possible” school of driving, which didn’t make for a restful
drive. We drove through a number of
small towns and lots of fields – all the hard work was being done by women with
the men just sitting around watching them.
Thank goodness I wasn’t born here.
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| Barahsingha |
We arrived at The Tree house lodge and met our naturalist called
Gaurav. We are in Tree houses 1 and 2
and very nice they are too. We have a
lovely balcony that overlooks some long grass and has trees on one side of
it. There is a nature walk cut through
the long grass and as there are several nocturnal creatures here, Chris
expressed an interest in doing it at night.
We were advised not to that without a naturalist as snakes were now
active after the rains and only yesterday, our guide had heard a pit viper
hissing in the grass near the jeeps and wondered if he had a puncture – there’s
no way I’ll be doing that walk in the day either!!
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