On the road

  Sunset in the forest The evening safari was going to begin at 3.30pm, and we were all worried about going out in the sun at this time when the temperature would be around 40 deg C! But there was a lot of excitement as well. During the morning safari, we hadn't really spotted a sloth bear, but otherwise, it had been all about the herbivores and birds. Would the evening safari be as thrilling? Spotted deer The open gypsy picked us up from the resort as usual, and took us to the Junona gate, that would take us to the core zone.  The safari started, and as we were passing through the jungle, we saw these tall, apparently ancient looking stone columns on either side. Our guide told us these were used as guiding stones for the mounted elephants in the ancient times. Once again, I was awed by the sheer amount of stuff to see and internalize in the jungle. As we made our way through the jungle, we saw many spotted deers, sambars, wild fowl and langurs. The first thrill of the safari came

Spotted deer  There was a sign board hanging right outside on of the gates through which we entered the core area of the Tadoba National Park which said something along the lines of: 'Your guide may open the jungle book for you, but if you go in with the expectation of only seeing a tiger, you'll be disappointed.' Our second safari proved this. It was day two of waking up at an an ungodly hour. The gate to the core area was several kilometres away from our resort, so we had to get an early start. We woke up at 4am, got dressed, and were gathered in the parking lot by 4.45 am.  Tadoba National Park is located in Central India, in the state of Maharashtra.It is India's oldest and largest national park, spread over an area of 625 sq. kilometres. From what we were told by our guides, we came to understand that the Park is divided into the core zone and the buffer zones. Core area is all jungle, whereas the buffer zone, as the name suggests, is the area of overlap between th

  The Journey from Pune to Tadoba National Park via Nagpur, Night Safari   PC- Sameer Bhide. Shot on OnePlus   We went on this 3-day safari in May-June 2022, which was almost at the tail-end of the safari season. There were six of us on this trip, and we were very, very excited. For four of us, it was going to be our very first trip dedicated entirely to wildlife safaris. A dear friend of ours (and one of the six people on the trip), knew a tour operator who would plan the entire trip for us, which in itself for a strange experience for the hubster and I, as we like to do all the planning right down to the minute detail. But overall, it turned out to be a good decision. The first day started with waking up at an ungodly hour as most trips generally do. We were taking the 7am flight out of Pune to Nagpur. Travel post-COVID has become kinda dicey with the crowds at the airport being very unpredictable. We decided to err on the side of caution, and reached quite early. Four of us, Myself,