Last weekend, my friend and me were having a discussion about vacations, places covered, what places would be preferred and why. I did not have to think twice, before I said “Nature” and “Tiger”. My friend was flabbergasted with my answer, and she looked at me as if I have lost few screws while on my way to meet her. I just gave her smile, showed her a list of wildlife areas that I wanted to visit. In my list, I had listed this place called – “Tadoba”. One of my friends who had been to this place told me that in Tadoba, it is not about sighting the Tiger, but how many Tigers do you sight is the question. Honestly, I did not understand when he told me this sentence. But, now after being there I can vouch on that what he said was true. Before, I get with my trip details, let’s get into history of the place. Am sure, you will be able to find loads of information on the Google. But still, here we go…
With the
long weekend approaching during the fag end of March 2014, ensured that we went
on tiger trails to Tadoba. This place has been on our “To visit places” for a
long time, somehow this would go down the list and we would end up visiting
some other reserve forest to have a glimpse of Tiger. We researched about
Taboda, found that it can be reached via Chandrapur. Chandrapur is not very far
from Hyderabad, just about 400 Kms roughly, which would mean clearly 7 to 8
hours of drive. We researched all
options of reaching the place, found that we can drive by taking the following
route: Hyderabad > Karimnagar Highway > Mancherial-Chandrapur. Since Shiv and me were in no mood to drive
all the way, we decided that train is the best option.
In the
month of January 2014, we booked our tickets to Chandrapur in Secunderabad
to Patna Express, which departs from Secunderabad station at 10 AM in the
morning and reach Chandrapur, at 16:48 PM.
We decided to stay near Moharli gate, as we had our safaris’ booked from
this gate. Hence, we ensured that our rooms are close by this gate. On the
d-day, we had booked the cab @ 8 AM to take us to the Secunderabad station. We reached at 9:30 AM and boarded the
train. We was peaceful journey, nothing
much to say. I did happen to meet ISB
professor, who was quite taken with our trip to Taboda. We did talk about his travels that he has made
and I found he had covered most of the reverse forest of our country. Honestly,
I would have loved to be in his shoes, but everyone has their own share of
travels to hold that kind of experience.
At about 4:450
PM, we reached Chandrapur station. As we approached the station, the cab driver
called and informed us about the cab details. As soon as we got down, we started to move
towards the cab. The cab driver introduced himself, informed us about the
distance that would cover and time that it would take to reach our
destination. We were on the way to
Tadoba, while driving through the city, we saw that Chandrapur had fort walls,
though I have not found much about it. Neways, I am thinking of seriously
digging into the history books to find out more about this fort. Though I have
my doubts that it would be in ruins, even though there was a fort once upon a
time.
On the
way, we could not resist ourselves to treat ourselves with the local delicacy
called – Dabeli pav, which had us drooling over it. We packed few extras and then off we went
right through the coal mines to Tadoba. The drive was a delightful experience
for my kids (aged 5 and 9) as they some of the machinery that are used for
coal mining.
Finally, we reached our hotel. Most of the reserve forest in our
country have two zones: reserve forest, which we cannot enter without
permission, and other part is buffer zone. Our hotel was situated in the buffer
zone, and we were about 10 minutes walking distance from Moharli gate.
By the
time, we reached it was getting dark, so our aim was to freshen up, have food
and sleep ourselves off. We have booked two safaris, one in the morning and
another one in the afternoon.
At 5:30 AM, our safari driver along with the
guide came to pick up at hotel. The whole
night, we could hardly sleep as we were excited to see the tiger. Once we
entered the forest, the only thing that came to my mind was Robert Frost’s
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” poem’s lines…”The woods are lovely, dark
and deep…”
The first
animal that we saw was Sloth Bear, followed by spotted deers, sambhar, monkeys,
and other birds. We even got the view of a tiger tracking its prey, but we did
not have any other encounter with the tiger. We waited for almost 3 hours, but
no luck so we called it a day as the sun was getting hotter. We came back to
our room, freshened up, lunch and took rest.
Our safari
jeep driver informed us that he would be back at 3:30 PM to pick us up. Again
we left at 3:30 PM, and then entered the forest. The driver informed us that he
would be taking another route, and it was worth the deviation that we
took. We drove through the dirt track
and almost missed the tiger, which was sitting in the water. We reversed the
jeep, waited for it to come out. It seemed like ages before the tiger decided
to come out and man….what a sight it was!! There was pin drop silence, not even
kids made a single movement. We were the only people in that entire stretch who
had such a beautiful and awesome opportunity to see the “Tiger” at such close
counter. We spent almost 30 minutes or so watching the Tiger, till we lost him
in the greens of the forest. This was our talking point the entire night.
Our
encounter with the Tiger was awesome, and we cannot forget it in our
lifetime. While coming out of Safari zone,
we met a family, who have been traveling regularly to Tadoba to see the
tigers. I was quite caught up with their
knowledge of each tiger they had seen.
With a simple picture, they were able to tell us tiger’s name, its
generations and how different it was from the rest of others. Hats of them!!, but unfortunately, I could
not collect their contact to keep in touch.
Hoping to
meet more of Tigers as I plan to cover few more...
