Reni Pani and Satpura National Park

11th February 2018 – back to Nature

Today we’re driven by Naseem, our very chatty driver, to Reni Pani Lodge situated just outside Satpura National Park and the start of 9 days of wildlife watching.....

Satpura National Park is one of the least known and visited park in Central India and its name is derived from the Satpura Hill ranges. The name means seven hills, with Sat being seven. Created in 1981, the park covers an area of 524 square kilometres, and along with the adjoining Bori and Pachmari Sanctuaries, provides 1,427 square kilometres of unique central Indian highland ecosystem.

The terrain of the national park is extremely rugged, consisting of sandstone peaks, narrow gorges and ravines. The scenery is beautiful, with densely forested hills reflected in the vast sparkling waters of the Tawa reservoir. SatpuraNational Park supports an array of mammals that include the tiger, sloth bear, leopard, sambar, chital, nilagi, four horned antelope, chinkara, bison, wild boar and wild dog amongst others. Also, a huge range of birds including; peafowl, hornbills, owls, eagles and kingfishers to name but a few. All this amongst a flora of sal, teak, mahua, bamboo, and a variety of grasses and medicinal plants.

The park is surrounded by a buffer zone which is between 15 and 20kms in width. In this zone there are villages and hotels. Many of the villages have been relocated by the government many years ago. The villages have been compensated and offered some employment in the park service’s mainly as drivers and local guides.

At the level crossing

The journey took us south for approximately 180 kms towards Nagspur and was estimated to take us about 4 hours as the roads are quite bad. As it was a Sunday the traffic was light and it only took us about 3 hours. In fact we could have done it faster if it hadn’t been for the train crossing. We sat there for 20 minutes to allow to trains to pass. The first one we counted 23 coaches and the second was a local train with only 11. As we had approached Satpura we had noticed clouds building up in the distance. Hmm, could there be some rain coming?

At Reni Pani Lodge we had a warm welcome with a cold tea with condensed milk (actually very tasty and refreshing) and a hot towel. We were then escorted to the main lodge to for lunch and to be introduced to our naturalist, Irwin. He informed us as to what we might see and what has been seen recently.

As we were about to head back to the main lodge for lunch after a quick freshen up it started to rain and soon became a thunderstorm. Fortunately this had finished before we headed back to our cottages. However it had made the paths a bit muddy. The sky was now quite cloudy.

At 2:45 we met back in the main lodge before heading out to the park. As it had rained it now felt a bit cooler and we were glad to see that we were in the covered truck. The park entrance is about 10kms away. Along the road we spotted some owls roosting in a tree. As the light wasn’t good our cameras were struggling to get quality photos. This sadly set the scene wrt photos.

 We approached the reservoir which was extremely low as the water had been used by farmers as the monsoon rains this season hadn’t been good. Irwin mentioned that in the time he had been at Reni Pani he had never seen it that low. Instead of the usual boat crossing to the park main entrance we walked across a floating bridge. On the other side we were met by our truck and driver. The local guide we’d already picked up from the other side of the reservoir.

With all 6 of us on board we headed at a break neck speed along the rough tracks. On many occasions we had birds pointed out to us as they flew away after we had come crashing out of the bush! This also happened to some of the mammal sightings. However, despite this we did see quite a few of the antelope and deer in the park and a poor sighting of a Giant Squirrel at the top of tree. They were obviously desperate for us to see a Sloth Bear and Wild Dogs. Sadly that didn’t happen and we almost ran out of time before had to get out of the park. That resulted in a mad thrash back to the main entrance. At the end of it we felt we’d had a rally drive rather than a game drive. Irwin had warned us that the rains might make things difficult to find and he wasn’t wrong, neither was his comment about getting a free Indian massage from driving on the rough terrain.

After a splendid dinner we headed back to our cottages as we had an early start with a wake- up call at 05:30. As we put the lights out the rains started to fall and we heard raining lashing down amongst the thunder. We hope that doesn’t impact our viewing tomorrow!?