An Escape in to the Wild

Nagpur

We were already halfway into Day 1 and we had to make it to the Jungle Home in Pench that was a mere 110 kilometers from Nagpur – a short spin for the mile-hungry Adventurers. The teams’ briefing was held at the scheduled time after a sumptuous lunch. The ice-breaking session started with the customary ‘Get Lost’ from Bijoy Kumar, Chief – Mahindra Adventure, soon after all do’s and don’ts  were explained. We had our walkie-talkies tuned in as we got into our Adventure Scorpios – a few among the fleet of cars maintained by Mahindra for such expeditions.

We were flagged off from the hotel Tuli Imperial at about four in the afternoon. We had covered about 10 kilometers in about half an hour and guess what – we were lost already. A 20-plus car convoy -including the lead, float and the sweep – lost its tail through the tight city lanes and traffic lights. To add to it, our car was beyond the radio range of the walkies. Luckily, we had the float following us and after some co-ordination we bunched up at the Mahindra Service centre in the outskirts of the city and on our way too. After a quick re-group and some snacks, we set off again with the convoy galloping towards Pench.

As the convoy cruised along the highway passing through villages, we had heads turning to watch a fleet of identical cars zipping through. With the music of our choice entertaining us through the auxiliary USB input to the in-car entertainment system and the Scorpios taking the bad roads in their stride, we were already crossing the Maharashtra – Madhya Pradesh border by nightfall. We turned left at Khawasa, going off NH7, to the Turia road to be led to the Jungle Home resort before half past seven.

As the teams opened up over dinner, a lot of interesting topics came up. But, with most of them being automotive enthusiasts, you know where most of them were headed! Alas, we had to call in an early night. Nobody wanted to be late for the first jungle safari on the next morning when we would be waiting at the forest gates at 6 am.

Pench Tiger Reserve

Experts say, the best time to spot a big cat in a jungle is early morning, when the movement is maximum. So, we were at the gates, with our safari Gypsys lined up and the guides perched in their seats, to be the firsts to enter the jungle  - all wanting to catch a glimpse of the ferocious yet majestic striped cat. There are five different routes that one could take for the Jungle Safari and roam the jungle as per our wishes but had to be back at the gates by 11 am as per the rules.

We took Route-2 and just as we crossed the buffer zone, the guide asked the driver to stop and asked us to be as quiet as possible. We could hear a lot of chirps and animal calls. Looking at our puzzled faces, the guide explained each call to us. He was certain that a big cat was moving somewhere nearby. As we stood still, we could hear the source of the calls moving in a direction. The guide and the driver decoded the chaos and we moved ahead hoping for them to be correct.

It wasn’t even half an hour in to the safari and we were actually in the process of tracking jungle calls and trying to spot a big cat. The weather was chilly and all of us shivered as the open-top Gypsy inched its way into the forest. The sun was out, but, the rays could not reach us through the closely packed trees. All of us in the car were looking intently in every direction for that hint of movement in the vegetation that would lead us to the cat, when the guide asked the driver to stop the car again. He was looking intently into the woods and we quickly followed his gaze. I could see a bush moving and caught a glimpse of a tail just before it hid behind the bush.

I kept looking hard, following the direction of movement and then I saw it - walking with its head down and a spring in its step. It was a leopard, a full grown one – lean and muscular. By now everybody in the car had their eyes fixed on the animal. The cameras were already out with people trying to capture the beast in its element, busy adjusting the variables of their lenses while I had long forgotten the little point and shoot dangling from my neck. The leopard slowly moved towards the road ahead of us as the guide said, ‘It is rare to spot a leopard and very rare to see it in the open’. I did not even bat an eyelid as the leopard came on to the road with a small leap and just glided away to disappear into the woods.

We stood there for some more time as the guide stood up trying to read more calls that the inhabitants of the jungle were giving away. After some pondering and discussion, the guide and the driver came to the conclusion that the leopard looked in a bit of a hurry, which meant, there was a bigger hunter in the vicinity. But they were not really sure which direction the calls came from and after some more waiting we decided to roll ahead on the same route.

We were still discussing the leopards, how elusive they are and how lucky we were to spot one, that too, on our first jungle safari, when my eyes - wandering through the greens - came across those ‘stripes’. It took me a moment to register what I had spotted. Yes! Indeed it was a tiger and the words just came out of my mouth and the driver stopped the car.

Just beyond the trees lining the road, was a slightly open patch where a tigress and her three cubs were out for a morning stroll. The cubs were playing around merrily, jumping on each other, scampering away from their mother and coming back again as she walked leisurely. The driver took the car ahead across a bend so that we could get a closer look. The tigress may have spotted us but she just did not bother. She continued on her path which we knew would cross right in front of us. As she got out from the shadows, on to the road and in the sunlight, I was mesmerised by her beauty. She was big, strong and muscular and at the same time calm and serene. There was absolute pin drop silence with not even a bird wanting to chirp. She walked across the road, came to a tree on the other side, turned towards us, looked straight in to our eyes and marked her territory. By that time, the cubs were alongside her and she led them away from us into the shadows.

This was it. My first tiger sighting! I could probably not have asked for more but then, there is always a male tiger – bigger, muscular and ferocious. So on we went in our quest to spot the male tiger. We reached the end of our route, trying to listen to more animal calls - not paying heed to the guide who was showing us deer, sambhar, nil-gai and scores of birds. We were bitten by the tiger bug and we wanted to see nothing less than a fully grown male tiger. So, we found nothing ‘interesting’ even on our way back out of the jungle.

The Drive-your-own Safari

While having lunch at the hotel, we proudly showed off our tiger clicks to other teams. Most of the teams had not been lucky enough to spot the big cat but were happy to have enjoyed the landscape, the different trees, the birds and other animals. Just after lunch, we were to set off for another safari, this time though from the Karmajhiri Gate, which is on the geographical boundary of Maharashtra.

The best part about the Karmajhiri Gate of the Pench Tiger Reserve is that you can enter the reserve forest in your own car and not the government approved Gypsys. I was looking forward to some trail bashing in the Scorpio when Bijoy handed me the keys to the Rexton RX7 AWD. With a wide grin pasted to my face, I joined the convoy towards the gate. We went through a long dirt trail, ditching the highway in true Adventure style.

With the guide seated in our car at the entry gate, we went into the jungle sharp at 3 pm with me at the wheel (read a wider grin). Now that I had spotted big cats unexpectedly in the morning, I was back to the jungle after some research that I had done before lunch. The probability of spotting a tiger in the afternoon during winter is very less as it spends most of its time sleeping in the shadows. The only chance you have is, if it is thirsty and you are near to that water-body. But being winter, there is still plenty of water available in the inaccessible parts of the jungle and so your chances go down further.

 

But then, we were there to spot tigers and all my senses were focused on deciphering any call that would lead me to the tiger. The guide told us that there is a tiger territory a bit deeper into the forest. Ha ha ha! How I wished to hear those words. That meant, I could gun through the narrow dusty trail, a thought I had been harbouring since morning, and with an AWD Rexton, I got the maximum out of this opportunity. We reached there in no time and I went back to cruising at 10kmph. Our eyes hunted for signs and our ears hunted for calls. Finally, we reached a huge lake. We drove to a vantage point from where we had all the banks in sight and we staked out hoping that the tiger felt real thirsty.

It was quarter past five and the guide told us about the bamboo forest, a specialty of Pench. With no signs of any tiger, we were back on the trail towards the bamboos. This section of the forest is filled with bamboos that have a life cycle of about 40 years. The ‘Bamboo Cathedral’, as they call it, has finished its time and it should be a decade before we see the cathedral back in green. We headed back to the main gate where all teams had assembled and were secretly happy to know that nobody spotted a cat. We took the highway back to our hotel instead of the trail.

The Wolf Safari

After a long tiring day that included two safaris, we crashed in to our beds after an early dinner. It was 6 am the next morning and we were back on the road, this time though, to see wolves. Wolves are very shy animals and they move in a pack unlike the leopards and the tigers. Spotting wolves is never easy as they are small and blend in with the surroundings. They will stay in the interiors as much as possible until they are forced to come out of hiding. What that also meant was there were a very less number of big cats in this area.

The area where we expected to spot wolves was deep in the forest. With the tiger out of the equation, I started concentrating on other animals. There are three species of deer in Pench – spotted deer, barking deer and the Chausingha. The barking deer is rare and we were lucky to spot one on two occasions. We also spotted Sambhar and the Nilgai. A fully grown Sambhar is quite big and an adult Nilgai can measure upto 7 feet to the top of the head. We also spotted a lot of birds including owls and eagles and vultures and parakeets and a lot more that I don’t remember the names of.

Basking in the sun after a real cold morning, I was enjoying trees and their leaves of different sizes and shapes and shades of green. The melodious Myna, the screeches of the Parrots and the continual chattering the Jungle Babbler were woven in to a symphony by the forest. Rudyard Kipling’s famous fiction - ‘The Jungle Book’ - is inspired by these forests and now I probably know why. As we headed back to the resort without spotting any of the wolves, I was not complaining. I was happy being a part of the forest. Back at the hotel, I freshened up for our drive to the Kanha Tiger Reserve.

We left at the scheduled time of 1:30 after lunch for the 180-odd kilometre drive. We had to go through Seoni, Keolari and Nainpur to get to our hotel at Kanha. But, in true adventure fashion, we went off the beaten track to find the Seoni by-pass which turned out to be under construction. So, back to the main highway, we reached Kanha before sun-down. It was colder than Pench, but the bonfire and high spirits kept the fun times rolling as the teams gelled together.

Kanha and Munna

Waking up at 5 in the morning had become easy by now. I woke up at the first ring of the alarm and was out fresh and ready within half an hour. Covered in a half-jacket over my sweatshirt and my cowboy hat over the hood acting as a wind-splitter, I was geared up for the safari. For a change, the big cats were not on my mind – not that I did not want to see them – if I spotted one, it was bonus!

The Kanha forest is different from Pench. The trees are taller and the vegetation denser. There are alternate patches of small grasslands and large tree-stretches. Even the topography is quite diverse, at least for the area where civilians have access. We were told that these grasslands were actually small villages that were relocated in 1972 to create pastures to save the Barasingha, a rare species of deer that grow about 12 tines on their antlers. We spotted these deer soon, along with the Indian Bison or ‘gaur’.

I asked the guide about the tigers of Kanha and if they had names for any, as it is a general practice at reserves. The guide started telling us about ‘Munna’. He is a 12 year old, 260 kg, fully grown tiger. They have named him Munna after ‘Munna-bhai’. He does not care even if 20 cars full of people are watching him. He will go about his business unaffected. Also, the stripes on his forehead read ‘C A T’. As the guide went on with stories of Munna, we saw two cars perched at the road-side and looking intently into the jungle. The driver sped to the spot. We saw glimpses of a big fat long cat as it went further into the trees to disappear. Supposedly, he was Munna and we were left longing to have a better look at it.

As we went further, we kept on missing the big cat by a few metres or a few minutes. But at the same time, I did not miss any of the other animals. The langoors were always found with the deer. We almost ran over a small bird that looks like a stone when sitting, the Stone Curlew, which we spotted only after it flew! We went to the breakfast camp and were back on the trail after a quick break.

We only had an hour left at the sanctuary and we were returning dejected and the guide asked the driver to halt. And there he was, a big tiger, bigger than Munna. He jumped on the road at a distance from us, walked slowly towards us, with his gaze fixed upon us. He stopped just a few feet away, waited for a few seconds and walked off. May be he was posing for us, looking at the long lenses the media guys carried!

 

This being the fourth Safari in three days, a couple of guys had decided to stay back at the hotel and rest. But as one of the guides said ‘You will spot a cat if you are destined to’ – a leopard paid a visit to our resort to chill by the pool. The poor guys went white and with no connectivity near the jungle, thanked their stars when the leopard chose to walk away.

The Last leg

It is the final safari today, the 13th of February, and we had already seen what the wild had in store for us. We wanted to do something different from what we did before. As we set out in to the forest early in the morning, we were greeted by fresh pug marks. The pug marks showed us that an adult tiger and a couple of adolescents were in the nearby area. We heard calls to that effect from the wild and we decided to stake out in the vicinity. We chose a small pond and with a vulture and jungle crows hovering nearby and we knew there as a kill around.

We staked out for more than an hour with no success. We then ventured out to other parts enjoying the calm and chaos of the forest, sighting barasinghas, chausinghas, bisons and a lot of peacocks and other birds. We came back to the hotel to pack our bags and left for Nagpur after lunch.

It was a 250 km drive from Kanha. We stopped over at Bison’s retreat near the halfway point covering almost a kilometer every minute. The convoy rolled unprovoked, unbroken right to the heart of the city, back to the Tuli Imperial. The after party of the Wild Escape went late in to the night with each and every one of the participants sharing their stories of Pench and Kanha, tiger sightings and how happy they were being a part of this epic journey. The Mahindra Adventure team noted all suggestions and promised to include a lot more fun with cars and driving in their zest for continually improving their events.

The Experience

Most of us had never been to a jungle before and obviously knew very less about wild-life and the beauty of the jungle. It is a completely different experience than the ones you may have had till date.

It is exhilarating to see the animals so calm and serene when in their comfort zone. You can feel the eerie silence when the big cats are close to you and it reminds you of how ferocious and menacing they can be. But then, you see them in their element and all the fear is lost. There is this pair of langoor and deer – the langoor calls out to the deer if they spot a tiger or a leopard. Also, you see those markings of territory and you know how even predators co-exist.

Those streaks of the morning sun that give you warmth on a cold morning, the whistling wind that carries the calls through the jungle, the tall trees that give shade to the animals and home to the birds, the grasslands that serve as food for the herbivores and you see how every part of nature does its duty without expecting a favour in return. All you want to do is to bask in those moments of glory the jungle doles out and keep them safe in the vaults of your memory and cherish them all along your life.