Circuit of India: Day 7 in Khajuraho (Waterfalls and Wildlife)

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The Ken Ghariyal Sanctuary and the Raneh Falls is a nature preserve 20 km from Khajuraho. I went round and round with Mohit yesterday about traveling there as he insisted it would be an extra 800 rupees. I said that I had paid for the use of the car for three days and there would be no extra cost. We again agreed that he would call his manager and I would call my travel agent. I talked to Ashutosh who agreed that there should be no extra cost. He said he’s call Mohit again and clarify the situation.

My driver came at 3:00pm as agreed and said that he’d talked to the office and there would be no extra charge. Strangely, Mohit was nowhere to be seen. It was a nice drive to the park and we went through some very small villages along the way. The people are farmers, although there hasn’t been much rain for the past two monsoon seasons so things are very dry and the farming hasn’t been very good. Many of them are clearly living a very rough life.

The sanctuary is made up of forests of teak trees as well as rivers (which are very low these days), two waterfalls (which are much smaller than usual), a very old volcano crater, and a long gorge (which is much more visible than usual as there’s no water to fill it up). There’s also the ruin of the house owned by the last maharaja. At the first stop, we picked up a park ranger/tour guide. He took me on a short walk to look at the two water falls, the volcano crater, and the gorge. He explained all about the various rock types and where the water levels should be and where they were in 2005 when they had record rainfall. Since then, there has been almost no rain. If the monsoons don’t come next summer, there will be serious problems.

After this, we headed to Crocodile Point to look for alligators (don’t ask - there’s no good answer). Along the 6km route we saw lots of animals, including languer monkeys, peacocks, antelope, spotted deer, jackals, a lizard, storks, and cormorants. There were also cows in the park that had wandered in from a nearby farm. At the end of the drive, we were rewarded by seeing a small alligator!

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