Blogs from Bandhavgarh NP, Madhya Pradesh, India, Asia - page 3

Last week, after leaving Chitvan Suites at Pench Nat'l Park (a fantastic hotel), we drove to Bandhav Villas at Bandhavgarh Nat'l Park. The drive... Driver has black hair, partially died orange. His style is to excellerate as much as possible whenever possible, to lurch to a halt when necessary, and to whirl within milimeters of cars, trucks, bikers, adult pedestrians, children, cows, dogs, goats and squirrels. Common refrains: "Ahh," "Ugg," "Oh my god," "Did you hit it?" and "That's too close. Please don't do that again." The drive between the parks took over 8 hours, when we were expecting 5, in part due to the "shortcut." The shortcut took us over about 30 k on a path that had not been repaired since the rainy season, and involved driving the early-1990s style van through at least ... read more

As many of you know, on March 8th I celebrated my 30th birthday. Its a pretty big milestone and I think hitting it while in India with Becky is about as good as it gets. I want to thank you all so much for your email and messages. It really made me feel great, especially because we are so far from family, friends and home. Ok, enough of that....on with the blog: Leading up to my birthday, Bex and I struggled to figure out what we should do to ring in my 3rd decade. There were a few pretty good options, but in the end we decided to try to make our way to Bandhavgarh National Park. This park has the highest density of wild tigers in India and has some pretty swanky resorts around it. ... read more

Choosing Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve over Khana and Pench, was a big decision as it is much harder to get to (19 hour train from Hydersbad to Jabalpur, 6am 5 hour train to Umaria and then an hour mini (as in the smallest) bus ride to Tala) however the decision has come good. It is incredible. Over the last 36 hours I have finally managed to grasp what Becks has been banging on about with regards to wildlife safari-ing. It is heart stoppingly exciting, breath-takingly beautiful and I cannot get enough. The park itself is a mixture of tall grass land, thick forest and rocky outcrops, which in itself is photo-fantastic. Added together with the sightings of huge wild boars, bandy legeed spotted deer and shaggy haired sambar, grumpyfaced langar monkeys, birds of a green and blue ... read more

This morning, we had our last ride around the park. Frankly, I think most of us were hoping that we would NOT find a tiger today after our adventure yesterday! Having Satyendra is great, brilliant at assessing the paw prints of tigers -- not only when the print was made, what the direction of the tiger was (okay, we could figure that one ourselves) but also right down to WHICH tiger it was -- he knows them all so intimately. We found a tiger within about half an hour. We waited anticipating the path it might take. Sure enough -- the thing crossed right in front of our jeep. We had a perfect view as it lazily made its way across -- stopping to stare at us calmly. This time, there were a few more jeeps ... read more

When Rudyard Kipling wrote Jungle Book, he was thinking of the area in Madhya Pradesh. It is here that the Bengal tiger still roams, albeit in limited numbers. Our seven hour drive to Bandhavgarh took seven hours from Khajurahao and, I am proud to tell you, four women managed that with nary a pee break. We did allow our driver to "stretch his legs" part way through our journey (he spoke no English so we assumed his dash around a corner was fruitful). We had read that we were to be on a "violent" road and were not disappointed. The seven hours meant that we covered all of 230 kms -- that would take maybe two hours and change at home. But why no breaks at the side of the road, you ask? Simply because, even ... read more