Why my trip to Bandhavgarh National Park was unlike no other experience before?
By Shweta
10000 years ago, the planet was full of life. Over the years, we have built our own concrete jungles isolating human life further and further away from all other forms of life.
As we lined up, jeep behind jeeps of humans waiting eagerly to enter the Bandhavgarh National Park, I found it strangely amusing. Humans took over the very same wildlife spaces, made concrete jungles out of it and are the same ones lining up in those jeeps. However, this time in search of the same wildlife they pushed away
Read the Ultimate Guide to Bandhavgarh National Park here
All dressed in camouflage outfits as though the animals could assume we were one of them in those outfit colors, each jeep had more cameras than humans with insanely long zoom lenses. The clicks of the shutter resounded everywhere we went.
Oh, how man has evolved!
The Safari Experience – Bandhavgarh National Park
For someone who has been scared of animals including the occasional street dog on the road, watching these wild animals in their habitat was an altogether different feeling. Surreal, to say the least.
We felt oddly at peace as we entered the forests. The mild noises of birds just waking, the rustling of the leaves to the quiet winds, the trampling of the leaves every time a deer was grazing. There were soft natural sounds ringing in our years for the first time in the longest of time and it was soothing like a long lost track you had forgotten.
I realized how beautifully nature co-exists within themselves. Despite the lack of a language, the predators and the prey alike have formed their own systems to exist, thrive and survive. You would find deers grazing just about 100 meters from a resting tiger. They can sense whether the tiger is on a hunt and only make a run for it when needed. That is something much more than intelligence and language for sure.
Best Experience
Watching a tiger cross right ahead of our jeep will be one of my best life experiences for sure.
A breathtaking moment, when you fear and admire something all at once and I thought that combination was not possible at all. As the tiger cut across our path, we held our breaths in awe watching it glide fearlessly, every step it took was effortless. He knew he ruled the forests there and he was having his fun. Such a fascinating creature.
Interesting Facts about Bandhavgarh National Park
-Several Tigers in Bandhavgarh are females with young cubs. Tiger Cubs hang around with the mother until they are 3 years old after which they each go their separate ways. They were several – Solo, Dotty, and Mahaman each with 3-4 cubs.
-Tigers have an unoffical bro-code where they each have their own territories and do not appreciate other tigers treading nearer to their boundaries.
-Bandhavgarh National Park also had an infamous tiger which they fondly named “Charger” for its love to charge on safari jeeps and vehicles with tourists. Now, this amazing tiger did not really kill any tourist, he just enjoyed the thrill of charging at safari vans, you know for fun and games and thus earned his name. The tiger, however, passed away a couple of years back.
-Solo, so named because of her affinity to sleep all day is a popular tigress of Bandhavgarh National Park. The park has signed a 6-year contract allowing filing and documenting her life and her cubs within the National Park. 6 years is what it takes filmmakers to make a wildlife documentary for 90 minutes. Something we never realize when we binge-watch series. Nonetheless, cannot wait to see the film!
My perspectives and how Bandhavgarh for me was a reminder on Life
Life was more aligned to the rise and fall of the sun in forests, with no man-made air conditioners, animals still have a way of using nature to survive harsh heat and cold.
The animals made at most use of time from dawn till 10-11 AM and once the sun was all the way up they rested under the shades of forests or inside their caves until it is the evening and they step out again.
It made me realize just how out of sync with nature we have become. With electricity, we can make it look like a day at 1 AM in the morning if we felt it and with centralized air conditioners who really cared when the sun was at its peak. I found myself wondering how many hours homo sapiens would survive in the forest without our self-made tools? Probably not even a couple of hours.
Living in the now
Life went on in the forest, with no reminiscing of the past or forethought about the future. Humans have surpassed every test to survive without much physical skills in this world. But conquering the mind that is often warped in forethought is one we have no remedies for.
Nature made me realize no other innovation matters if, we cannot conquer the anxieties of this mind; a mind that often travels on the speed train between the past and the future.
Life is what slips away in the seams when we are warped into a different time zone. Life is now, life is what’s happening at this very moment. Let us remind ourselves that, for a few minutes a day at least if not all our lives.