Kanha Tiger Reserve - Madhya Pradesh

Kanha Tiger Reserve

Africa has the Big Five – lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo. Well, India is more than a match, there’s the Big Seven – tiger, lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, buffalo, bison.

Must have taken the wrong bus or got off at the wrong stop, 17hrs on the train from Kolkata to Nagpur, Maharashtra, purely to go see the tigers in the Jungle Book setting of Pench and Kanha.

Off train over to bus station. Pench? I go from desk to desk asking Pench? Pench is the tiger reserve closest to Nagpur, 60km away. Everyone looks at me blankly, and I’m starting to get used to this. When even people whose mother tongue is English can’t understand me, how will a local Indian who speaks Mahrati or Hindi? Getting nowhere until I do my best impression of a tiger, roaring, all claws, teeth on show, laughs all round, ah Kanha, Kanha one guy shouts through his tears of laughter. Not Pench but tigers ¬– so Kanha it is. I’ll see Pench on the way back as the guys at Kanha 280km away will know how to get there.

Lonely Planet lists Nagpur to Kanha as a 6 hour journey; I managed it in 30 hours?! Bus, Nagpur to Seoni, 4hrs; Seoni to Mandla  takes another 6 hours, from Mandla the next bus to Kanha is 10am next day, it is now 6pm with no other choice but stay the night in Mandla so by the time I get to Kanha 1pm the following day I would have taken thirty-six hours travelling from Kolkata!

Turns out I have gone past a junction stop; well, it was dark. Missed turning to Kanha by 60km! Found that out on the route back.

A safari is 3,600INR a trip – £50, give or take a fiver, so I need sharers. Bus dropped me off by the gate and next to a reasonable guesthouse (Chandan, 550INR) where I can stalk passers-by. At 4pm, two Italian guys, Guido & Lawrence, come in with the same idea, they left Nagpur on the 9am bus just as I did – but they made it in 7hrs!

Safari here we go, first one is the evening drive, first impressions are not in line with Jungle Book, but the scenery is fantastic, first sight of the enormous gaur. The term Indian bison is incorrect but used for tourists. 1000kg of bull bovine! Eagles, jackals, elephants and deer all spotted but no tigers.

Next day, another 5am start. And it’s cold.  Into the Jungle and our guide mentions a “Tiger Show”. Instantly I say ‘no’ as I read it as a staged sighting, but my two safari partners agree so I join them. You climb a ladder onto the back of an elephant and waddle out on the beast to a pre-spotted area where a tiger is and there is a massive close up male tiger, just sitting looking at the elephants walking around it, seemingly oblivious to the humans on top. So close, so incredible.

Next day out to do the same, but totally different experience to the previous ‘tiger show’. The elephants and their mahouts go out to find a tiger, once they have found one they radio in to ‘central’ where we are then dispatched to the area to climb aboard our elephant steed.

We were the first to approach the spot, hidden in a vine-entangled bush, deep within was a tiger – the tigress and the elephant!!

The mahouts push the elephants into the bush to flush out the tiger into the open, the elephants are cautious and well-trained, tigers tolerate it because they are so big, an instinctive respect for size over power. They don’t seem to take into account the humans on board, so it’s very natural, which is why you get so close. The shock/surprise was totally evident. Tigress came from nowhere just shot out from under the bushes, elephant bellowing, mahouts shouting, me cursing the camera for not focusing and myself for facing the wrong direction when she came out! Elephant went into sharp reverse; camera smacked me in the mouth. Explanation seems to be that she must have had a cub nearby, we were the lead elephant so neither tiger nor elephant were prepared?! Sitting on an elephant bellowing, stamping, making that deep rumbling noise I have ‘seen’ on David Attenborough’s programmes. Just amazing! We went back a second time – which are the more composed photos.

To add to the exhilaration of the ‘Tiger attack’ we saw our second tiger of the day an hour later. A far more relaxed young male spotted ourselves from our jeep, we came across it as it strode down a jungle road, saw us and shot off into the bush, we waited until we heard some sort of alarm to indicate where it might be, nothing, then as we slowly patrolled the area our guide spotted its striped body, hidden away in the jungle. Fantastic, an equally satisfying ‘spot’ of our own

Finished off the day with one final safari. Saw a leopard and a sloth bear, way off in the distance at sunset, so ended on a high, I’m pleased to say. With light fading, I just managed to get a picture of the bear, but leopard was too dark and too far away.

Pench turned out to be a non-starter and yes, the guys in Kanha gave us the directions – basically, back the way I came, get off at the right place and it’s a six-hour jaunt.

Left early the following morning on the Friday to spend a few days’ tiger-spotting in Pench, but it was India’s National Weekend with a national holiday on Monday, 60 years celebration of forming its first democratically elected government (India is the largest democracy in the world!). No rooms at Pench and all the vehicle licences are gone, they restrict the number of vehicles allowed into the parks, at Pench it is 80 vehicles per session with a maximum of 8people in each vehicle + guide & driver = 10 persons– 80 x 10 tourists = 800 people. No rooms either, so decided to call it a day on the tiger front and carry on to Nagpur, where I am now ‘overnighting’ before getting train to Hyderabad.

Gloriously happy and jealous of myself for having such a fantastic time at Kanha.