Bandhavgarh Day Two

We woke up early this morning and went back to Bandhavgarh Park. The drive was lovely and the scenery is gorgeous. It is mostly forest of Mahua trees (after which the lodge is named) and bamboo interspersed with some meadows with wonderful tall grasses. One grass is particularly visually striking and has a white feather-like plume on top. We saw several spotted deer, some bird species, and a glimpse of a male tiger.

We returned to the lodge after about four hours and the chef gave us some information on lentils and the different varieties. We then went out to his garden and sampled a fresh radish – which is long and white as opposed to round and purple-ish. We went for a short walk to a waterhole area and watched some birds including a elegant looking white egret and a large wooly necked stork. Next, we had a lunch of some Indian food and we leave soon for an afternoon adventure where we should be able to get close to some Asian elephants…

More when we get back….(PS: Jodi – I tried to answer some of your questions on the blog).

This afternoon, we went to a separate part of the national park that is to the north a little bit. The land is scarred from areas that they have burned to try to eradicate the Lantana plant, which is a non-native invasive species. They are starting a new program where you can ride an elephant through this section of the park. Today is the first day that the elephants carried tourists. He was previously used to track tigers in the forest. The elephants are smaller in size from African elephants with smaller ears. They use a saddle that consists of padding from burlap stuffed with hemp and then a platform on top of that, which is secured with rope. Seeing the forest from the back of an elephant is a totally different perspective. We saw a blue bull, which is rare in this area, more langur monkeys, a glimpse of some wild boar, and some rhesus monkeys. The elephant just knocks over small trees to create a path to walk on and snatches bits of bamboo to eat as we were walking. We got a close up look at some of the gigantic spider webs, many of which are right at elephant back height. The ride was enjoyable but it was sad at the end of the day to see this obviously intelligent animal placed in chains for the night.

We have just returned to the hotel and we are going to try to post some of this before dinner. This lodge continues to be lovely with attention paid to all of the small details. This morning, it was a little chilly (maybe sixty degrees but the people around here seen to think that is very cold); so there were hot water bottles for us in the safari vehicle. More soon…