Kanha Jungle Safari - 3 Tigers
Jo Dale from the UK is not new to India and doing a tiger safari. This time - 11 to 23 February 2009 - she did a Kanha jungle safari as well as visited Pench. She shares her experience in the review below...
Our operator was Wild About India - Jo Thomas, who runs this small company specialising in tailor-made tours is a dear friend of mine.
I give them 10 out of 10 for performance and that's not just because of our friendship! Jo knows India inside and out and is so enthusiastic about it that you can't help but want to go back time and again. She's persuaded me to go back twice already!
Jo specialises in really understanding what you want to see and your interests and designs a tour that is just perfect for her customers. Jo even called me several times to check up on how we were doing.
I would not recommend anyone else but her for India.
This was a group tour. The last trip to India, in 2007 that she organised was tailor made for myself and my fiancée. The organisation was perfect and our guides were first class.
This trip was a birding/tiger/cultural tour. We therefore visited Kanha and Pench to look for tigers and also Bharatpur, Chambal, Agra and Delhi. We did a river boat cruise along the Chambal and visited the Taj (natch).
Best parks to see wild tigers, and when »
The group comprised, Jo, her 8 year old twin daughters, Jo's parents, and seven clients, plus myself. Joining us for the duration of the trip was Ranno, who owns Hotel Sunbird in Bharatpur.
In the tiger parks we were divided into several Suzuki jeeps (called gypsies) along with a driver, guide and one or more forest ranger (all of whom expect a tip at the end of the day).
Elephant rides were only available to see tigers off the roads once they had been found by a mahout. We had the chance of two of these trips - tokens are bought from a central point before you can go to the elephant for the ride (see below).
Guide
We were lucky enough to meet up with an old acquaintance, Brijendra Singh at Bharatpur, he used to work for the Bombay Natural History Society when I was there in 1995 on a YOC trip. He was our guide then. He still had a photograph of me and the rest of the group from that time, so it was great to catch up and he is a brilliant guide - a very knowledgeable birder.
Rattan Singh who guided us in 2007 is also a most revered birder who found us loads of different species.
The guides on our Kanha jungle safari were much of a muchness, they are not so keen on the birds, preferring to focus on tigers!
Pench is a young park and it shows in the guides, however, it was a more sedate experience than the Kanha jungle safari.
The only communication problems we had were with the guides in the tiger parks, but that is not so much a language barrier but more a case of they are so focused on tigers that that's mostly what they want to show you, even if you want to focus on birds instead.
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Hotel Sunbird, Bharatpur - very nice little hotel, good food and close to the national park. Ranno is the owner and he is also an old acquaintance of mine. Try the rum, avoid the wine!
Chambal Safari Lodge - a lovely little lodge set in a farmland setting about 30 mins drive from the National Chambal Sanctuary where you can see Indian skimmers, gangetic dolphin and the critically endangered gharial. Around the lodge there are plenty of birds and Indian fruit bats, plus if you use torches at night you can see Indian palm civets. Dholbeer does a good line in souvenir t-shirts.
Krishna Jungle Lodge, Kanha - another nice lodge by Indian standards, comfortable with a friendly host who kept us entertained by the campfire at night. There is a pool.
Mogli's Den Pench - quirky accommodation in round houses with ceilings full of glow in the dark stars, and pet rabbits roaming in the grounds - well the ones that have avoided the local jungle cats.
Food
A typical breakfast consisted of boiled eggs or omlettes, toast, fresh fruit, tea (the milk is best avoided) and coffee.
A typical lunch would be a fairly dry sandwich, stuffed paratha, more boiled eggs, bananas and juice.
Dinner would generally consist of a couple of meat curry dishes, usually chicken with all the bones (and other bits in some cases) still on. "Mutton" - which considering we saw no sheep but plenty of goats you have to wonder, go figure, and fish, dhal, a paneer dish, chapattis and/or naan plus rice and plenty of vegetarian curry options. These were spiced more to western tastes given the make up of our group, which included some sensitive stomachs.
Dessert usually consisted of ice cream (which got the OK from Ranno so we risked it) and some rather more dubious looking offerings.
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On this trip I saw three tigers, all at Kanha - two good views from elephant and one just a glimpse disappearing off into the jungle.
The first sighting was away from the roads. The Mahouts had found a five year old tigress relaxing in some bushes. I describe below how the elephant rides work. Suffice to say we took it in turns for the elephant rides with Fran and I going first.
It is always a humbling experience to see the most stunning of cats not more than a couple of metres away.
As with the last elephant encounter I had with a tiger in Bandhavgarh, the mahouts got too close and she snarled, stood and walked a short distance with several of us in hot pursuit.
She settled again in some thicker scrub and we then watched as the mahout instructed his charge to clear as much of the vegetation as possible. But in the end she was still quite obscured from our view. After a few minutes our time was sadly up and we had to return to the jeeps.
Apart from tigers, I personally saw lots of golden jackals, one sloth bear, Guar, Sambar, barasingha, languar and macaques. Others in the group were lucky enough to see dhole and jungle cat. At Chambal we saw gharial and Indian palm civet and fruit bats. Plus over 230 species of birds.
Overall highlight were the tigers of course!
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We would be up at 04.30 for an early morning game drive.
As with all the tiger parks I have been to, the guides try and get to the front of the queue for when the park opens which in this case meant that, after a quick cup of tea, we were in the vehicles by 05.30 and at the park entrance just before dawn. The park opened at 06.15 just as it starts to get light.
As it was just before dawn it was freezing cold. Thankfully we came prepared with fleeces, Berghaus, hats and gloves.
As with Bandhavgarh, there is always a scramble to get into the park and it's reminiscent of the start of a rally - only more disorganized. Each group drives their "gypsy" along their own trails for about the first hour or so to check for pugmarks and listen out for alarm calls before then going on to the central checkpoint to pick up tokens for any elephant rides that may be on offer.
At the same time as this, the Mahouts go off in search of tiger away from the trails on their elephants.
The third day in Kanha started well with a tree full of orioles (black hooded, golden and a probable black naped oriole), we also saw golden fronted leafbirds which were stunning. However, the best part of the morning was when we came across a mahout and a load of vehicles just off the road within a meadow of long grass.
Apparently there was a tiger just sitting there, although you couldn't see it from the road. So after some deliberation we raced off for an early breakfast and to get our token from centrepoint, as it was clear that there would be a tiger show in the offing.
I think a lot of the other vehicles were hoping to see the tiger emerge, but in the end it was the right decision to get the tokens because he stayed put in the long grass for quite a while.
The grass made viewing quite difficult but we were still able to admire this large male tiger as he relaxed after having a meal. This tiger also had a radio collar, but I'm not sure whether the mahouts actually tracked him with that, or just in their usual way. All of our group were fortunate enough to see this tiger over the course of the morning.
We also came across a group of black storks.
Later that morning having decided to focus on the birds, Richard and I came across a mixed flock of flycatchers in a stand of bamboo. One in particular caught our eye as we had never seen it before. We were so busy trying to work out what it was, I wasn't able to photograph it. It turns out it was a black naped monarch and in with it was a female Asian Paradise flycatcher as well as Tickel's blue flycatcher.
After that it was time to head out of the park for some lunch. When we arrived back at the lodge we met up with three others from our group who I had been with the day before but moved to Richard's vehicle for logistical reasons.
They had had a rather more eventful morning as they had encountered another tiger after the elephant show which gave them cracking views by following their vehicle for about half an hour, offering all the photo opportunities they could have asked for.
As you can imagine I was somewhat disappointed that we had not been there to see that.
That afternoon was another quiet game drive - we did manage to see a sloth bear although not very well. All we could really see of it was the top half in some long grass, its head was pretty much obscured by the vegetation.
We did spend a bit of time watching the barasingha in the afternoon light and we added a white naped flameback to our trip list. We also saw a stork-billed kingfisher which is quite a rarity for Kanha.
Weather
Dry. It's very cold in the mornings on the game drives so it's important to wear layers; by lunch its t-shirt and shorts time.
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Get Jo to organise your tour for you.
Definitely either go to Kanha (I saw 3 tigers) or Bandhavgarh (I saw 3 tigers - better sightings than Kanha) - these are the two best places for tiger (I have also seen tiger at Ranthambhore - my first tiger sighting was here).
Read more trip reports for Bandhavgarh and Kanha...
Corbett is lovely but more difficult to see tiger - but they do have the bonus of Asian elephant. No one in our group saw tigers at Pench, but it is a good stop between Kanha and the airport so worth a couple of nights to wind down on the way back.
I would ideally choose a tailor-made option next time or a smaller group - as I missed out on some key sightings by other group members which is a shame.
If going by train, go first class ac and for goodness sake use the porters to show you to your seat! We entrusted Ranno and it was a bit of a fiasco - we ended up about 12 carriages from where we needed to be on a part of the train that was going to decouple at the next station and go elsewhere! Thankfully it all ended well, if a bit fraught.
My camera, a Panasonic FZ18 and binoculars were the most useful items in my luggage.
Rating (out of 10):
I was a bit unlucky with the mammal sightings - Richard and I probably saw the least of the group, but we made up for that with the birds. It can be very frustrating being in a big group when you are split between vehicles as not everyone sees the same things so it's more difficult to share the entire experience - leading to a feeling of being gripped off on occasion.
I also came down with flu when we got to Kanha and was off sick for two weeks following the trip. But that has nothing to do with the organisation, which was spot on.
So I rate the trip 10 for organisation but 8 overall owing to the above.
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