Khajuraho

We did a Bandhavgarh National Park + Khajuraho trip over the Republic day weekend. The travelog for Bandhavgarh can be found here

After another hearty breakfast, we bid adieu to the Tiger Den resort at Bandhavgarh and started for Khajuraho (230 km away) at about 8 am. We figured we should reach Khajuraho by 12.30 pm – accounting for the not-so-fast MP highways. What we didn’t account for was the difference in standards of service between the Shining India (Bombay/Delhi/Bangalore) and the interior of India. Our only black mark on the trip was our driver. He just couldn’t wait to solve some crisis back home in Jabalpur, and he would be on the phone every 15 min for the first 2 hours of the trip – and keep searching for mobile signal on his cell phone the rest of time (because we were in a forest area) – all the while driving.

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Bandhavgarh National Park

When we first drove through Bandhavgarh National Park, all we saw were the godawful roads inside the sanctuary. It was a neverending series of potholes which even backward Africans would refuse to acknowledge as a road. At 9 pm in the night, after 2 hours of traveling in the car from Katni station over Madhya Pradesh’s not-so-good roads, immediately after a 21 hour train journey from Mumbai, we were at the end of our lines – just hoping the journey would get over soon. However the road conditions ensured that the last 15km stretch took us an hour to finish.

Only once we reached Tala gate and found our surprisingly plush resort that we heaved a sigh of relief and attacked the homely food with gusto. January in Central India is quite cold and the entire place was covered in mist. However, our cottages were equipped with serious-looking room heaters and the warm service of the staff of Tiger Den Resort soon made us at ease. After the meal, the smiles were back on our faces and we retired early to get up in time for our first tiger safari

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