In this diary of a week in India, we take you to Maharashtra, to the jungles that inspired Rudyard Kipling. We begin having just spent two fruitless but enjoyable days at Pench National Park…

Pench Forest Morning

 

(On the road, between Pench National Park and Nagzira Wildlife Reserve, Maharastra)

Our driver Santosh wears all black and looks like small-time mafia. However in the few days he’s been working for us we’ve discovered he’s quite devout, offering obeisance whenever he begins the day’s driving or passes a temple. On the dashboard, a small plastic icon of Sai Baba lit by lurid purple and red lights radiates blessings. Also on the dashboard are his, not one but two, mobile phones. After two days at Pench he seems relieved to be away from the boredom of nature and back in mobile reception.

Our time at Pench has been a washout. Not totally; it is wonderful forest area rich in birds and wildlife, and we’ve seen Nilgai and Jackals for the first time (although the Tigers that everyone who comes here to see have eluded us). However the first morning on safari revealed a bureaucratic obstacle; we are not allowed to get out of our vehicle. This is a common practice in Project Tiger Reserves, partly to protect visitors, but one suspects ‘crowd management’ is really behind the directive. With dozens of jeeps carrying mostly urban Indian visitors through the park, the threat of wild areas being trashed or wildlife disturbed by careless visitors is understandable. For us though, this presents an insurmountable problem, as we cannot record from inside the vehicle! Rohan, the parks guide designated to accompanied us, was insistent, and we could see he feared for his job if we took a typically Australian liberal view of the rules. Attempts to get special permissions having failed, we cut our time there short, and have left early this morning to move on to Nagzira, some 250km away.

Nilgai and Peacocks at Pench

We’ve been advised that we must arrive at the Nagzira park gate before 4pm, as any late-comers will not be allowed to pass. With a few hours up our sleeve, we are optimistic it will not be an issue. However Santosh is alternating mobile phones, and although his Marathi conversations are a mystery to us, I get the sense he is trying to describe our location as we drive through the countryside and rural villages. It occurs to us that maybe he wishes to bail out of a disintersting job and get a replacement driver to meet us enroute.

Sure enough, we arrive in a dusty provincial town and Santosh advises us he must return to Nagpur, another driver “is coming”. We wait. The minutes tick by. We grab some lunch and Sarah gets supplies from the markets. More mobile phone calls are made. “Not long now, he will arrive”. Santosh fills in time by solemnly replacing the ‘chillies and lime threaded on a string’ offering that hangs off the car’s radiator. Its been an hour now, when finally a vehicle pulls up and four young men get out. They all look underage; which is our new driver? After much animated discussion one is handed the keys with admonitions from Santosh to look after us and his car. Luckily our new driver looks to be the more mature of the group. His name is Satish. “Does he speak English?” “A little” replies Santosh with much grinning and head wobbling.

We hop in, eager to get going. Satish looks at us with a boyish grin and says “Nagzira, blast off!”. What have we gotten ourselves into? Fortunately he seems a good driver, although a little heavy on the juice. With a little time to spare we roll up to Nagzira Gate, and I go into the adjoining office to pay entrance fees. The clerk on duty seems perplexed, we are not expected. He should have recieved a message from the Divisional Field Officer’s department advising our earlier arrival date, but our new itinery does not seem to have come through. A short-wave radio conversation ensues. Lots of rapid-fire shouting and airwave static. No we are not booked. Although inwardly concerned, I don’t let it show, putting on a confident air of “just tell me when you get it sorted out”. Sometimes its fun playing ‘Roger of the Raj’, but this is not one of them. Eventually the clerk turns to me and says “How many days are you staying?”. “Six days we are booked”. “Not possible, I can only accept entrance fees for two days”. “Why?” “Because park is closed Thursday”. (There is something Spike Milliganish about all this, not surprising that he grew up in India.) Closed? It is Tuesday afternoon, I decide not to try and work it out here and now, and agree, paying two days fees. We collect a guide for the duration, a quiet man from a local village named Radisham who seems to speak no English at all.

Nagzira is a remote area, a collection of small domed hills rising from the plain, covered with dense forests. We drive down a dirt road through grass and deciduous woodlands, the teak leaves beginning to dry and fall, as its been a few months since the end of the monsoon. In another month the forest will look quite bare, and dinner-plate sized teak leaves will be littering the ground. By April and May it will be 45 degrees celcius everyday, but for now the forests look green and pleasant. A family of quail scamper off the track ahead, the first we’ve seen in India.

We’ve been advised that our accomodation here will cost 200 rupees a night, about US$5, so we have no great expectations. We arrive at a compound where there is a canteen, and proceed the kilometre or so on to our accommodation. To our relief, it turns out to be rather romantic lodge set among immaculately manicured gardens overlooking a lake. Amazement’s never cease. There is no electricity here at all, so it is quiet and all lighting is from candles and lanterns.

After settling in we return to the canteen for an evening meal. It is a basic village setup, with a mud floor and wood-fired stove. The head chef oversees a group of boys and woman who prepare food ingredients on the floor in various corners. However it looks clean enough, and the greatest threat to our wellbeing seems most likely to come from the chef’s heavy reliance on salt and chillies. Over dinner we meet a wildlife enthusiast who has driven down from Pune with a personal mission to sight Tigers. His name is Rajeet, and it turns out he knows our friends from Pune, Rahul and Gaurav. Even India is a small world.

As with many Indian parks there is a curfew, and even though we are staying in the heart of the forest, we are not allowed to go out until 6am in the morning and must return by 11am. We brief Satish and Radisham for the next morning, and get an early night.

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