Pench and Tadoba National Parks

From Kanha, we headed a little further south to Pench National Park, where we went on three safaris.

Beforehand, we had already heard that the chances of seeing tigers here were not very good. Well, first we saw some new animals, namely nilgais (largest Asian antelope) and wild dogs. We also saw a leopard, which was somewhat far away from the road, enjoying the opportunity to eat the langurs (a type of monkey) that it had killed. Unfortunately, it had left its prey quite close to the road, so now 11 cars were waiting for Pardi to move and get closer. However, he didn't feel like having so many curious people watching him during dinner, so he eventually retreated further into the bush - at least until the nuisances themselves left.

Finally, on the last safari - already on the way back - we saw the last-minute tiger (#11): First, we saw two juvenile tigers, who were lying in the shade at some distance and then marched further into the forest, and shortly afterwards we also saw (as one of only two cars) the corresponding mother, who was initially about 50m away from us and at the end already about 200m away. Fortunately, the view was quite clear and we could see the tigress quite well for quite a while.

That we were once again favored by fate became evident during the onward journey with the surprise of our (remote) driver that we actually had a tiger sighting here in Pench.

The last stop of our stay in India was Tadoba National Park.

Shortly before arriving at our accommodation, we found out that we had been moved and would now stay somewhere else, which initially didn't bother us much, but then - according to our feeling - had to be more of a downgrade. Compared to all the other accommodations, this one was noticeably worse.

Of course, safaris were also available from here - again, three were on the agenda. So, we got into a jeep three more times and let ourselves be rocked around. It was striking that it was noticeably hotter in Tadoba than in the other national parks, and there were also a lot fewer animals to see - possibly related to that. In the end, besides the 'usual small game', we saw a leopard on a tree, two marsh crocodiles, a fleeing sloth bear with two cubs (the 'sighting' lasted only 2 seconds and remained without a picture, but since these bears are quite rare to see, we wanted to mention it at least) and a tiger (our last one, #12) at a distance of about 300m.

As we are true insatiables, we were rather disappointed with the last few days because the tigers we saw in Pench and Tadoba were always either difficult to see or far away. We had the 5 best sightings in the first 6 safaris, while in the 9 safaris afterwards, the zero sightings and difficult sightings came together. Overall, we had great experiences and very, very good and close encounters, which obviously are not a matter of course. The guides and drivers were very satisfied with every even so bad and even so far away tiger sighting, so it became clear that really close encounters are by no means the order of the day. Now we were finally aware of the special and rather rare animal sightings we had. As so often in our sabbatical year, we were once again at the sunny side of life...

By the way, we also noticed here that for some of the local tourists, not only the tigers were the attraction, but also us. We were admired several times, photographed from other cars, and even approached and asked about our origins by a few brave ones. In the hotel complex, a father and his son even took a selfie with us. We are a bit confused and amazed that we attract so much attention here... When we asked a guide about it, he said that there are not sooo many foreigners here and at least the people from the cities may have never seen a 'white' person before. That in turn we can imagine, because we actually only saw extremely few people here who could be directly classified as Europeans (or Americans) by their appearance, and (felt) for the first time in our holiday career, we did not encounter any other Germans! Be that as it may - now we have roughly a feeling of what it is like to be famous. In the future, we will gladly do without it again...

Now we continue to the orangutans in Borneo, and we are excited to see what awaits us there. We will tell you about it (provided we find internet :-) )