Last week after looking into going to Ranthnabore NP for some tiger spotting the more we looked into it the more complicated and frustrating it was becoming. After 20 minutes looking in the guide and a bit on net we had decided on and partially booked Bagh Sarai an Eco resort in Bandhavgrah NP (a bit of a bank buster after averaging around £12 a room per night!). We jumped on the train from Varanasi for our first taste of AC2, and arrived at 7am in Umaria, a small town in Madhya Pardesh about 22 km from the entrance to the Park. Straight away we knew we had made a good choice, we were given our room (a luxury permanent tent) served a hot breakfast and were treated to some acrobatics by the resident Blackfaced monkeys. On returning from a drive with the only other current guest, Rishi the manager filled us in all the info about the park etc and by 2pm we where ready to crack on with our first drive in the Tala Zone.
We entered through the main gate for our afternoon drive, straight away we started to the usual suspects around here – Blackface monkeys, lots of spotted deer, the tigers favourite meal Sambar deer, and few nice looking birds. Rishi and the guides are a wealth of info and had answers to any questions we had. 3/4 of the way through we came to one of the dams in the park after the info was relayed from passing gypsy’s (Jeeps) that there is a tigress and her cubs behind the dam. We spent 15 mins waiting for them to hopefully appear, but alas all we got was the sounds of the playful growls. We did get the to see the face of a sloth bear just before leaving the park as well. So the first day ended without any luck with the tigers, any disappointment was forgotten as we got back to the resort, served a hot drink (evenings are cold) and given a superb meal. I happened to have the BBC documentary Lost Land of The Tiger about the tigers they had located up in the Bhutanese Himalayas’s on the laptop. We watched that we Rishi with great interest and then retired to bed to the sounds of the jungle.
