Pench to Panna is 427 km. It took us 9 hours and 20 minutes, an average of under 46 km/h, with a single break for lunch. In the planning post I mentioned a leg we had pencilled in at five hours that turned out to be ten, with an overnight halt in a city chosen for being halfway. This was that leg. We skipped the Jabalpur halt and did it in one go, and the ten-hour estimate held to within 40 minutes. It is the most accurate forecast this trip has produced.
For most of the day the highway behaved. After Pawai, a small town in Panna district, it turned into potholes, construction and truck traffic for the rest of the way. We reached after dark, about 1,870 km into the trip. Bangalore’s potholes did cross my mind, but a comparison takes energy, and neither of us had any left.
Our base for two nights was Greetoe Camp, a very nice place 10 km from the Madla gate and right on the Ken, known in ancient times as the Karnavati. Monday was the first day since Bangalore with neither a highway nor a gate time on it, and a riverbank was the right place to spend it.
Some context. Panna Tiger Reserve covers about 1,598 sq km across Panna and Chhatarpur districts, with the Ken running through it from south to north. It became a tiger reserve in 1994 and held somewhere between 24 and 40 tigers around 2000. By 2009 it held none.
Two tigresses, T1 and T2, were brought in from Bandhavgarh and Kanha that year, followed in November by T3, a male from Pench. T3 stayed a short while, then walked out of the park and headed south, towards Pench. He covered more than 450 km in a month before the forest staff caught up and released him in Panna a second time. That release held. Both tigresses had litters in 2010, and the count today is right around 100. Nearly every tiger in the reserve descends from an animal that was delivered here.
Tuesday’s two safaris were both from Madla, the busier of the reserve’s two main gates. The forest department’s own brochure lists the best time to visit as 15 October onwards. We were nine days early, which is consistent with the rest of our planning. Panna did not hold it against us. We got a tiger in each outing.
The morning’s tiger was a male, cooling off in the water when we found him. I got a shot from a distance and it holds up. Then he got up and walked past a row of jeeps that had been waiting for him to do exactly that. He is the third big cat in a week to walk past jeeps without being bothered one bit.
The morning’s other stop was the Vulture Point Falls, home to a whole bunch of…Indian vultures. The view alone would have been enough. A Critically Endangered bird in those numbers made it better. We also got a glimpse of a sloth bear, a few monitor lizards and a good variety of birds.
The evening’s tiger was about a year old. He had been playing with his siblings and came out just long enough to entertain us.
Langurs, sambar, spotted deer, a jackal and the usual birds made up the rest of the list. Two birds were not usual at all, at least for me: a black redstart and a painted sandgrouse, both lifers.
That closes the safari account for this trip: seven safaris, four tigers, four leopards, 2 sloth bears, 5 jackals. In Tadoba I described my safari record as poor. Might have to edit that.
One more animal, and it was not on the list. Panna has no wild elephants. The forest department keeps trained ones, and a group of them walked past us while we were focused on the young tiger. Behind them came a lone one, catching up with the rest.
An elephant is also how this trip began. On the Monday before we left, a wild one wandered into the area next to where I live, off Mysuru Road in Bangalore, and killed an elderly man. I was the first person to reach him, and called the ambulance that took him to the hospital. The next morning, we got into the car and drove north to spend a week looking for wild animals.
The last photograph from seven safaris is of an elephant that looks wild but is not.
The wild one was at home.
