Kanha National Park is one of the largest parks in central India and a tiger reserve. The park has a significant population of the Royal Bengal Tigers, Sloth bears, Indian wild dogs and many more. The forest depicted in the famous novel by Rudyard Kipling, “The Jungle Book” is based on this jungle too.
From Mumbai we reached Jabalpur by train, then took a cab to Kanha National park. The drive was very scenic with mountains, jungles and villages on the way. The sunset in middle of the jungle was just a bliss. We stopped for a while to enjoy this beauty and clicked few pictures. Spotted few mammals on the way that kept us interested and alert until we reached Kanha. Late night we arrived in Kanha and stayed in the government forest guest house just before the entry gate.
Kanha Tiger Reserve is home to over 1000 species of flowering plants. The lowland forest is a mixture of sal and other mixed-forest trees along with scattered meadows. The highland forests are tropical moist, dry deciduous type and of a completely different nature like bamboos, etc on mountain slopes.
We went for our first safari early in the morning. I have been to many national parks across the country but this one looked very different. The park was very colorful and a treat for the eyes. We saw lot of birds during the first safari. There was Shikra which flew in held on to a prey and sat right in front of us on a tree with the kill. First safari was kind of dedicated to sighting of birds of prey (Raptors).
Although we couldn’t see the big cats in the safari was a memorable one just for the sheer beauty of the jungle. We did spot some wolves on the safari track itself.
The Park is respected globally for saving the Barasingha from near extinction. Their population is very less in India and most of them live in this national park. They are also called as swamp Deers. Bara means ’12’, these deers will have total 12 tines. Fully grown stag some time have up to 14 to 20 tines.
In the following safaris we tried our best to spot the big cats, but unfortunately we couldn’t find them. At one place we were informed guards have spotted a tiger resting somewhere and they will take people on elephant to show the tiger. But we denied doing it as we were in no mood to see a tiger in that manner.
Decided to explore some local sights, so we went to Bhedaghat. It is situated by the side of river Narmada and is about 20 km from Jabalpur city. Its most famous sights are the Dhuandhar Falls and Marble Rocks. We took a boat to ride along the Narmada river at a leisurely pace, you can see the majestic white cliffs rising a hundred feet tall on both sides. It is magical to see the shades of cliff changes as you move ahead. Being in the wild for the past few days, this gave us a different relaxing experience
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