Bandhavgarh the land of the tiger!!!!!! May-31 to June-1

We left lucknow and went to Baandhavgarh national park. It took us till night to reach there. We had planned to take two rounds of the jungle in an open jeep. To spot the animals we need to get up at least by 4:00 in the morning. So we went to sleep by 10:00. I was full of excitement and anticipation and I couldn’t sleep a wink! In the morning I went in the jeep with mom and dad. We spotted three tigers in just four hours.

Only someone who has actually seen many jungles can appreciate our great luck! In the evening, I went with Kaka and Mausi. In the first three hours we spotted a stand-off between a tame elephant & a male tiger! Imagine the luck!!! At almost five minutes for the park to close, We heard the alarm calls of a monkey( when any herbivore animal spots a carnivore it sounds the alarm) By the sound of it, our guide could tell that it was a call for a leopard near by and thanks to our luck, we spotted the leopard almost 4ft. close to our jeep! It had a male spotted dear in it’s mouth and it was carrying it between its forelegs.

Apart from big cats, we also a varitey of animals and birds.

 

Jungle fowl

Spotted deers

 

A leopard with its kill

 

 

Changeable hawk eagle

 

 

Gwalior...And Papas old home

We drove to Agra via Gwalior. We spent around 3 hours seeing the Gwalior fort. It is a nice fort with a very interesting palace. This palace was built around 500 years back by Mansingh and had been occupied by various different kingdoms since then.

Since we had such a nice experience with MP Tourism hotels, we decided to stay at UP Tourism hotel in Agra. We checked in to Taj Khema. It is within 500 meters of East gate of Tajmahal and offered a view of Taj that is probably better than what you will see from inside the Taj campus. We were somewhat late so we could not go inside Taj today. We decided to visit the house where papa had stayed for around 4 years till 1976. This is right next to the southern gate of Taj. Though My father did not have the courage to disturb the current occupants of that house but my mother knocked at their door and told them that we had come to see the house. To our surprise, the current occupants of the house really welcomed us and treated us to nice Pethas. They wanted us to stay with them and not in any hotel!!



Mansingh’s palace at Gwalior fort

Sahastrabahu temple at Gwalior fort


















Inside the temple

The deers of Shivpuri

This is one of the posts, which I loved the most, for it comes in my field...

The national park of Shivpuri is known for the variety of the dears found in here. Spotting them in such a dense forest, with their beautifully camouflaged coat is not by any way simple.
Thus, in the photos which I have taken for this post, are genuinely hard-earned. The types of dears we saw in the jungle were the Chinkara(Indian Gazelle) ,Neelgai (Blue Bull),Chittal ( Spotted dear),Sambar
I have included one-one photo of each.


A Neelgai and a cleaner bird interacting

A Beutiful Chital


A Sambhar

A Chinkara (photo by Papa)

 

Ujjain to Shivpuri National Forest, May-5

We had decided to start really early since the drive today was close to 350 Km. We had planned to start by 6:30 AM and we were more or less on time (7:30 AM) when we left Ujjain. This stretch of NH-3 is just wide enough to allow 2 trucks to pass but fortunately the road surface was good in most part and the traffic was sparse. In fact whole of our drive through MP has been through very sparsely populated area where you will not even see a hut for miles. We reached Shivpuri by 3:00 PM and checked into the resort (Tourist Village). We were the only 2 families in the resort.

We mainly relaxed for rest of the day though .I and Papa went for a walk in evening. I was very excited to see peahens flying high for the first time as two of them flew to rest on a 50 feet high tree.


Start of our long drive to Shivpuri.

 

Favorite adventure sport for people in MP.

Both the photos have been shot from running car and hence the bad quality .

From Mandu to Ujjain

A drive of around 140 Km took us to the town of Ujjain. This brought up 1000 Km of our trip. We decided to take a halt here for two reasons. The Mahakal temple here is another of the 12 Jyotirlinga and it also breaks the long drive from Mandu to Madhav National Park (Shivpuri) into two days. On the way to Ujjain, we took a lunch halt at Indore. We saw the Kanch Mahal at Indore. It is a Jain temple the insides of which are built totally of different type of mirrors. Even the floor is mirror. There is a lot of intricate work on those mirrors. Unfortunately photography was not allowed inside the temple. Today I had my first meal on this trip that was not that enjoyable. But the Lassi on the highway more than made up for this. BTW, Lassi has become a big part of our breakfast, lunch and dinner!

We probably spent more time locating our hotel in Ujjain than we took in driving from Indore to Ujjain. Fortunately the weather here is cooler than it was in Aurangabad. We decided to walk the 4 Km to temple instead of driving. We have been having too much good food (Dhaba for lunch and at our hotels in night) and all of us are worried that we will be at least 80 Kg by the time we return to Pune.



Fossils park at Mandu. It is in real bad shape and is probably a fossil itself

Baobab (not sure of spelling) tree that Alauddin Khilji got from South Africa

This is just a sword which I found pretty beautiful as it gives a feeling of power