We woke up still in Kanha, after a long first day of taking safaris – or “safariing” as we’ve started calling it. Some of our group wanted to take a third trip into the Kanha park, but we opted to do some walking in the countryside instead. We had heard that our hotel abutted a river that fed into the national park, so we set out to find it. We wandered all over our hotel’s grounds, and even walked outside and down the main road, but did not find the river. Instead, we saw a number of local homes, and plenty of cows. Thoroughly mystified, we headed back to meet our returning group members. They were somewhat sad – they had spotted no tigers, and were therefore unable to get their promised elephant rides.
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| The back of the Mogli Resort - if you look closely, you can see the fire-fed, manual water heaters. |
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| An enormous caterpillar we saw along our walk outside. That is James's foot for reference. |
We packed up the bus, and headed off. Our trip was scheduled for 6 hours, and we had been promised more of the same bumpy roads that we enjoyed on our way into Kanha. Our destination was the national park in Bandhavgarh, and more potential tiger sightings. We settled into our seats, and after a very bumpy beginning, we realized that the road had turned smoother – and we were even enjoying the ride! Our guide Bhupendra explained that these roads belonged to a district that had been difficult to gauge in a recent election. To insure success, the incumbent party had redone all of the roads, and we were among the lucky few who got to travel before the roads decayed.
On our lengthy bus ride through central India, we saw countless examples of local houses, roadside temples, subsistence farming, and meandering methods of transportation – from four people on a motorcycle or scooter, to seven stacked on a tractor. Busses were absolutely crammed full of people, and we saw bicycles that rode three – not to mention the organic methods of transportation, with carriages drawn by cows. We stopped a number of times for impromptu toll collectors, and at one point, as we were driving through a small village, a throng of people filled the street, banging drums and clashing cymbals. The bus was unable to continue – in fact, the religious parade on its way to a nearby temple demanded (smilingly, of course) that the bus pay a nominal toll. We certainly complied. Other stops along the way were brought on by herds of cattle using the same one-lane road, or delivery trucks driving abreast.
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| Part of the religious parade which stopped our vehicle until we paid the toll. |
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| A herd of cattle in the middle of the road as we drove through. (This happens ALL the time in India). |
This was a good road, one of the finest we’ve seen. Yet, despite its status as the main thoroughfare, it is a one-lane road with absolutely no lane markers, no stop signs, street lights, speed limits, or any demarcation – other than the toll collectors. The fastest driver has the right-of-way, as long as there are no cattle in the way (there are always cattle in the way), and drivers are honking their horns more often than not. Still, in its own random way, traffic keeps moving, accidents are few, and people eventually get to their destinations. We were still short of our destination when we pulled into the last big “city” on our way to Bandhavgarh. In the city of Umaria, one of our tour members, Annetta finally had her opportunity to buy some clothes to replace the bag that her airline, Air India, had lost on her trip to Delhi. There are no department stores in these cities – cities that might number in the hundreds of thousands, incidentally. Instead, we stopped the bus outside an otherwise anonymous streetside shop, and she went in to browse.
Our Danish quartet also bought a soccer ball, and once the local children saw four, white, six-plus footers step out of a bus, we were immediately surrounded. Here in the center of India, if we stray from obvious tourist destinations, such as the national parks, we are seen as celebrities – they certainly don’t get many non-Indian tourists around these parts.
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| Erin and Tabitha posing in front of a cow who had taken up residence in the middle of the Umaria market. |
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| One of the outfits the salesman tried to sell Annetta in the market. She ended up purchasing a few t-shirts instead. |
Once the clothes and sundries were purchased (including bindis for all the women in the tour, courtesy of Bhupendra), we were back on our way to the Mogli Resort-Bandhavgarh, run by the same company that hosted us in the Mogli Resort-Kanha. This Mogli was nicer at first blush than the Kanha trip – there were certainly less insects in the room, and the shower facilities were much less scary. We gladly dropped our bags, and after a buffet dinner of Indian curries, we were off to sleep early for our next safari day – two trips into India’s Bandhavgarh national park.
