Pench National Park

Pench National Park or Pench Tiger Reserve is located in the border of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. We went there before Diwali. We took a flight from Ahmedabad to Nagpur. From Nagpur, we took a cab. It is 2 hours' drive. The Pench tiger reserve is the original setting of Rudyard Kipling’s most famous book- The Jungle Book.  

Jungle safari 

In Pench, we stayed at Kohka Wilderness Camp. All our safari bookings were done by the resort. 

Kohka Wilderness camp

We reached the resort in the afternoon; we took night safari on day 1. We went to the Khawasa Gate(Madhya Pradesh)- it is a buffer zone. We saw many deer. The sky was so clear, and we could see so many stars.

Stars

Khawasa Gate

Deer

Next day, we had an early morning safari to Turia Gate(Madhya Pradesh). It was 6 o'clock in the morning. As soon we entered the gate, we saw a fox. It was running on the road ahead. We saw many deer and bison. We also saw a tiger, but it was very far. The tiger was hunting, and so the deer and the monkeys were making alarm calls. We stopped at around 8:40 a.m. to have breakfast. There is a place inside the reserve where people can have breakfast. It is an open space, there is a canteen and a shop. We did some shopping at the shop which had Jungle book characters sculptures - Mowgli, baloo (bear), Wolf family of Mowgli etc. After breakfast, we hardly saw any animals. We were a bit disappointed that we could not see the tiger from nearby and had little hope from our next safari as it was in the afternoon.

View 

Deer

Bison

Turia Gate

Mowgli shop

Fox

The afternoon safari turned out to be the most interesting and fun. We went to Khursapur Gate (Maharashtra).  We saw a tiger walking and we followed him for quite some time, it was a sublime moment. We also saw foxes, Neel gai and deer.

Fox

Deer

Tiger

Neel gai

Tiger

We also explored the Kohka village which was very neat and clean. In fact, all the area to reach Khawasa gate and Turia gate were very well kept with no garbage here and there. At Khursapur gate, we were given glass water bottles to control the use of plastic bottles.

Kohka Village

When we went to explore the Pench River, we saw many birds like kingfisher, bee-eater bird, hoopoe etc. The sunset at the Pench River was worth watching. If you love to explore wildlife sanctuary, then this place is worth exploring.

Hoopoe

Kingfisher

Bee Eater Bird

Sunset at the Pench river