Gir National Park

We have been in Mumbai 8 years now. And we love travelling, as is evident by this blog.

So it was like a black mark on our wanderlust credentials that we hadn’t yet visited Gir National Park, which is practically next door in Gujarat. To be fair, although Gujarat sounds closeby, Gir is about 800 km away by road from Mumbai – because the road skirts all the way around Gulf of Khambat. Same with trains. And with only a single train to Junagadh (closest railway station) from Mumbai, tickets are always in short supply.

However, Gir is the only place where lions can be seen in India – only place in Asia infact. It is the last surviving population of the Asiatic lion (otherwise lions are only found in Africa now). And it is something else to see the king of the forest in his natural habitat. India is a more of a tiger country, with about 15 tiger sanctuaries spread across the nation. And it turned out to be a blessing, because the holiday (Good Friday) weekend that we travelled, all tiger sanctuaries were full. But we were able to get safaris in Gir for that weekend (The Supreme Court has limited number of safaris everyday in all wildlife sanctuaries – and for holidays, safari permits at the well known tiger reserves are sold out months in advance)

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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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