- admin
- 07 Aug, 2024
At around 7:30 a.m., the Gitanjali Express halts at Nagpur. We tumble out of the train and take the over bridge and come to the Sitabuldi side exit. A quick kullar of chai with a few biscuits, and before long, we see that our Innova has arrived. Most of the people from the group start giving instructions as to where and how to fit in the luggage. It is all done in a wink and tied up for extra security. We too settle in and are all set to go.
Nagpur Railway Station is an important junction on the Howrah- Mumbai and Delhi-Chennai route. Nagpur is a category A1 railway station, being the divisional headquarters of the two railway zones, Central Railway and South East Central Railways.Nagpur is precisely at the geographical centre point of India and is therefore referred to as the zero mile centres. The city is our vault. Our gold reserve is safe and sound in Nagpur since the British Raj days. It is also the golden gateway to the abode of the Royal Bengal Tigers, for its proximity to various national parks of Central India.
We are now moving out of the city and are now on the highway to Pench.
Pench National Park, including Pench Tiger Reserve, derives its name from the Pench River that flows through the park, cutting it from north to south and dividing the park into two equal halves. Pench, today, is spread out through Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. A dry deciduous forest in the Satpura Range, Pench is home to different varieties of flora and fauna. The major attraction in the park is of course the Royal Bengal Tigers, wild dogs, spotted deer, jackals, wolves, etc.
Pench has been described in detail since the Mughal emperor Akbar’s time, in Ain–I–Akbari. However, it was made famous by the youngest Nobel Laureate for Literature, Sir Rudyard Kipling in his masterpiece, The Jungle Book.
Seonee, the villages of Sivani and Kannivara, the river Wainganga are some of the places that exist in Pench till date. Modern Seonee, which is on the fringes of the park, is a bustling small town today with a quaint little railway station.
Last but not the least, Kipling gave us Mowgli.
Whatever, happens for the greater good. So it was with Kipling. Kipling was born in Bombay and sent to Britain for schooling. A rare gem like Kipling was refused a scholarship to Oxford. As the Kipling’s could not afford a university education, Kipling had no choice but to return to India to work as a journalist.He was destined to be in India.
Although Kipling never visited Seonee or Pench or Kanha, we get a vivid description of the place from him, just like with the great Bengali writer Bibhuti Bhushan Bandhopadhyay, who never visited Africa but penned down “Chander Pahar” taking the reader through a virtual tour of the Veldts of Africa. “The Jungle Book”, was hugely popularised by Sir Baden Powell, the founder of the Scout Movement. Kipling’s book was illustrated by his father, Lockwood Kipling.
It takes a maximum of two hours from Nagpur to Pench, and we will be checking in at the resort any time now.
The part of Pench in Maharashtra has a gate in the core area, Khursapar, which is a natural choice for safaris. On the MP side, there is the famous Turiya gate, a popular area along with the buffer zones of Teliya and Rukkhad.
Our resort is a few metres away from the Turiya gate, with the core forest as our backyard. It’s a nice and cosy stay here, with lip-smacking hot meals. Most resorts here are built in an eco-friendly manner, and so is ours.
After freshening up, we have a hearty vegetarian lunch and then rest a little before it’s time for our first evening safari. We enter through the Turiya gate, and then it’s heavenly bliss.
A huge herd of spotted deer stops us to cross the road at a leisurely pace. The fawns cling to the hind legs of the does and sometimes jump and leap up to keep pace with the herd.
Far ahead we see a group of jackals running. They are in a group, and so we hurry there to see what they are up to. By the time we reach there, they have scattered, and we find a daring brave jackal before us, looking straight at us. He sits like a statue and doesn’t move when we approach, and finally we move away. He stays rooted there, probably saying, ‘I belong here’.
The search is on for spotting a tiger. We wait by the Pench River for some time without result and then start on our return journey, and while returning, we hear the alarm call of a sambhar and wait for the show stopper to arrive. But it is time to proceed towards the gate, and since it is always a wait and watch game, the curtain has to go down for the evening.
The tigers must have seen us, we are certain, although we don’t get to see him. The forests are huge and the tigers are in no mood of coming out of its lair and saying hello. We try to track tigers by studying their movements, signs and sounds of the jungle, and signs like pug marks and alarm calls. Mostly we are successful in tracking them, but sometimes we are not. What is most important is we keep an open eye, an open mind, soak in the beauty of the jungle and take in the thrill of the gypsy ride. After all, meeting Sher Khan in his territory is a big deal. We suggest four to six safaris to increase the probability of a good sighting.
A good cup of refreshing tea awaits us at the resort. A quick shower and an early dinner are recommended to be able to set out early for the next morning safari. Good night.
Where is “Sher Khan”? It is tiger time in the early hours of the morning. As soon as the sun rises, tourist vehicles enter the gates and most of them might get a glimpse of Sher Khan, the tiger, and the luckier ones get a glimpse of “Bagheera,” the Black Panther. Leopards are abundant too. However, an encounter with “Baloo”, the big sloth bear, can also be very interesting. Our list of expectations is long and it is only a matter of time, I remind myself. Formalities completed, we enter gate Touria.
Our route is lovely and scenic and we ride along the beautiful path ahead with trees surrounding us. The guide asks the driver to halt; it’s a pair of scoop owls neatly camouflaged into a hollow in the tree trunk. The crew take turns to take pictures of the couple in the sleepy hollow, when suddenly we hear a shrill cry of a sambhar deer. Alarm! Another alarm closer! The monkeys soon climb the highest branches and the owls move deeper into the tree hollows, pretending to be asleep.
Far away we see a sambhar staring into the woods to her right and stomping her feet. And then another alarm and she springs away. From the woods to our right emerges “Sher Khan”. As he moves in the most majestic way, our eyes follow him. It is pin drop silence now. It seems time has come to a standstill. That is the hypnotising power of the tiger “Sher Khan”. Our eyes follow him as he crosses the pathway in front of us and then disappears into the woods to the left of the road.
By now the other vehicles have come to know of this wonderful sighting and all four to five vehicles zoom away to find him again around the corner where he has to cross another pathway. So do we.
Tigers move about patrolling their territories. They scratch trees and urinate on them on to mark the territory as their own. They walk for hours to mark their territories and this is something they do very frequently, in a span of say every two to three days. Tigers kill to eat in about 4-5 days on an average. However, a tigress has to kill daily to feed her cubs and as they grow, sometimes she kills twice a day. Herbivores like the spotted deer, sambhar deer and barking deer are the common preys. These are a tiger’s favourite meals.
Many people have an idea that tigers can be seen only in the summer months, when they drink a lot of water and stay submerged in it. On the contrary, it’s all the same, as the tiger does not hibernate like a bear and has to get its prey, and also mark its territory to sustain itself. Water is a necessity always, whatever the season. We get to see a lot more in terms of movements in winter, while in the summers they tend to avoid the heat and stay inside shady and marshy areas and are often seen cooling off in a water body or drinking water.
Of course, it is not that you get into the forest and immediately see a tiger, unlike a zoo. We step into their world and search and wait for the right time, and when it matches with theirs…BINGO! Just like Kohli waits for the best ball and matches the timing with the momentum…for a SIXER!
