Our trip to Mougli’s forest: Pench

It’s been playing in our mind for a long time to visit a national reserve forest after our innumerable vacation at the sea and the hills.

Last Diwali (Oct 2011) we as a family, managed our first proper vacation in the forest. Our destination was Pench, the forest which is the original setting for Rudyard Kipling's much reclaimed work, “Jungle Book”. Pench is about 70 km from the city of Nagpur. Spread over an area of 275 sq kms 90% is in the state of Madhya Pradesh rest 10% in Maharashtra. We took an overnight train ride (Nagpur-Mumbai Duronto express) and reached Nagpur early in the morning around 7:00 AM. The car form the hotel did a timely pick up, but we had to struggle to find a decent restaurant in the city of Nagpur, for breakfast that early. Alas, we had to do with biscuits, bananas and “bhaijiyas” from a local shop.

Pench was relatively an unheard place for us, even friends from MP could not throw much light, and hence we had apprehensions while making the plan. However the moment we reached our resort “Pench Jungle Camp”, we were convinced with our choice of destination.

Pench Jungle Camp is a decent resort and the tent we stayed in was comfortable. It overlooked a small lake. Our little girl was thrilled with the different variety of butterflies and birds she could see in the resort and her peak of excitement was her horse ride that the resort provided. The tent was spacious with good quality furnishing and linen. Bathroom is the tent was large and tastefully done. The tent AC came handy in the afternoon; however the nights were much cooler and pleasant. As per food is concern, though variety was limited the quality and taste was never compromised.

We took 2 Safari’s arranged by the resort. They took good care to even pack us a scrumptious breakfast for the early morning safari. Luck was not in our favour and we missed sporting the tiger by 10 mins. The Jeep ahead of us spotted the Tiger from very close quarter and we had to be satisfied by witnessing the Tiger’s Poop. In both our safari we sported many samba deer, baboons, Jackal and many varieties of bird. It’s a beautiful natural forest and the safari trip in itself was thoroughly enjoyable. My daughter was aghast to see the huge size handmade bread used as a fodder for safari elephants.

We also made a visit to the nearby pottery town, where our little K along with her father tried their hand in the potter’s wheel.
The resort naturalist took us through a nature walking trail around the outskirt of the jungle. We managed to spot many birds including Kingfisher and several trees including Indian ghost tree, Teak wood tree etc

Over all it was a pleasant 4 days 3 nights trip and given a chance would like to go back here again.