Drive to Discover 7 – In the lap of wilderness

If you ask me today, what it is like to sight a tiger in its natural habitat, I’d frankly be hard-pressed to find the words to describe it. It all begins the moment you enter the forest. The buzz of the Cicadas enrapture you as do the chirping of different birds. It’s like entering a world of peace and tranquillity till the silence is broken. It’s broken by the alarming call of a deer and the birds. Even the langurs cries fill the air announcing the arrival of something predatory…..and ‘dangerous’. 

Before we go further, let’s get to the part about what we are doing in the middle of a forest. Honda’s Drive to Discover, an annual property decided to explore beautiful Madhya Pradesh in its seventh avatar. The idea was to go about the vast wildlife reserves that lie around this part of the state. Our weapon of choice was a fleet of Honda cars that included the new Brio, Amaze and the BR-V.

The drive was flagged off from Nagpur with our first destination being Pench. I was also accompanied by my colleague Venkat for this trip and were going to switch cars on a daily basis. Our journey began with the cute little Brio. Considering this was a long trip, both of us were pretty loaded with luggage and were wondering how the little Brio would manage with a full load and the vast open highways. The boot was fully occupied with my suitcase alone with just enough place for my back-pack. Thankfully it was just the two of us in the car, which meant the rear bench was taken up by Venkat’s luggage.

And off we went. The highway from Nagpur to Pench is a nice smooth section of tarmac and surprise-surprise the Brio felt totally at home on the highways. The 1.2-litre engine never felt underpowered or out of place. Cruising at three digit speeds was easy as pie and before we knew it, we had already reached Pench Tiger reserve.

Pench National park, nestling in the lower southern reaches of the satpuda hills is named after Pench river, meandering through the park from north to south. The area of the present tiger reserve has a glorious history and its neighbourhood is the original setting of Rudyard Kipling’s most famous work, The Jungle Book.

Now this was my second visit to Pench. The first one turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt at spotting the big cat and I was hoping and praying that it crosses my path this time. Chances were bleak considering we had an afternoon safari and the maximum chances of spotting a tiger is during daybreak. But we still had hope. The forest keeps changing its colours and looks different every time you visit it. After spotting various other fauna, we finally stopped at a place and surrendered ourselves to the silence of the forest. No blaring horns, no pollution, no commotion, just the sounds of nature.

But before we knew it, the forest came alive. Alarm calls by a deer, the langurs and the birds meant something was on the move and it was something big. And then suddenly we see a horde of jeeps all heading in common direction in a big hurry. We followed suit and parked up ahead near an open area. As we waited in anticipation, we finally saw it. She is called C21 and is a youngster, but there is no denying her presence.

We were awestruck by the tiger’s beauty and it took a couple of seconds to realise I had a camera in my hand. C21 gave us ample time and pretty much posed for the 15-20 odd cameras that went completely ballistic. It was a sighting that would satiate the most ardent wildlife enthusiasts and I returned to base a happy man.

The next destination was Bandavgarh with a lunch stopover at Kanha. Unfortunately we weren’t doing a safari at Kanha which was sad but Bandhavgarh is known for sightings and that would more than make up for it. Our choice of wheels on this run was the BR-V with the i-DTEC diesel engine. After the compact Brio it felt like a limo which plenty of space.

About a couple of kilometres after leaving Pench we realised that the BR-V was certainly a good thing. The road conditions were as bad as they could get and 30 to 40kmph was the best we could manage. The BR-V was jumping around like a pogo stick with its suspension crashing over potholes the size of craters. We were expecting the BR-V to handle the potholes better than this for sure.

With almost the entire journey being on state highways and no national highways, the roads were patchy all over with us finally hitting a good stretch once the sun set. With 510km on the tripmeter when we parked at Bandhavgarh, this was pretty much the most arduous section of our journey.

A lot of things were in our favour to spot a tiger here and even 5 degrees of bone chilling cold failed to dampen our spirits. But lady luck decided not to shine on us. Forget the tiger, it seemed like it was too cold even for the other animals to wander out. All of three hours later our dejected group headed back to the resort with no sighting whatsoever.

Destination Khajuraho was going to be the final leg of our journey and we had the Amaze petrol to do it in. Frankly after the torquier BR-V, the Amaze with its 1.2-litre petrol engine should have felt underpowered. But to our surprise it felt a lot more eager and friendlier to drive than the BR-V. Bags loaded we left Bandhavgarh with a heavy heart.

Thankfully the roads were a tad better on this leg but we managed to take a different route than what was suggested and ended up driving on a lot of under-construction roads which were again, horrible to drive on. 260 odd kilometres later we finally reached Khajuraho with our car coated in dust.

Since we were pretty close to the important places in Khajuraho, we decided to walk it. The Khajuraho Temples are amongst the most beautiful medieval monuments in India. Originally a group of 85, they are the largest group of Hindu and Jain temples in the world, although only about 25 of them remain today.

A Unesco world heritage site, they have awed generations of people with their architectural brilliance, intricate carvings and, most famously, their erotic sculptures. A quick tour and it was time for our flights back home.

Discovering new places, brilliant weather, some not so brilliant roads and an amazing drive meant the seventh Honda Drive to Discover was yet another success. But the highlight of the trip was clearly C21, the beautiful female tigress who left us mesmerised. We were sad that we didn’t get a chance to see the majesty of nature at Bandhavgarh, but elated at having communed with nature at its best and recharged to tackle city life again.