We used to have the concept of team outings at office where we could choose a place anywhere in India to spend the weekend every 6 months. While it sounds fancy, the usual locations happened to be Lonavala, Goa, Jaipur which we had seen anyway and no excitement about. In addition, most of the time was spent inside rooms in a resort which was just not the kind of travel I liked. Pench was in my wish list for a long time, but never got a chance to make it happen
In one of the projects we did, we had so good bonding among our team that we became friends even outside of work. As we were planning our team outing, our boss threw the bad news at us saying the budget will not be sufficient since we were a large team. There was also a rule that bosses were to be present in such outings which made pulling one off impossible as he never agreed to travel
We all decided to pitch in with personal funds to make this trip happen! The only time I had did this
Since we excluded bosses, we could have much more freedom on the location, so we decided to go to Pench to spot the tigers in wild. I had only seen tigers in zoos, and this seemed like a perfect plan
Pench vs other tiger reserves like Tadoba, Bandhavgarh
Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle book was based at Seoni in Madhya Pradesh, close to Pench which made this special
Tadoba is the largest and supposed to be slightly better for pure tiger sighting, so has much higher demand which means needs booking much before in advance like 3+ months upfront
Bandhavgarh is better for birding amongst the three and has highest number of tigers and tiger density
Each of them has 100+ tigers
Pench is slightly less crowded, has better teak forests which add to the beauty and practically the only place we got reservations for safari, so our choice was naturally made
Tadoba continues to be on our wish list
Reaching Pench
Nagpur is the closest airport. We hired a coach for our team to get to Pench and back. The travel time was about 2-2.5 hours including short stops on the way
Pench safari experience
You need to do at least 2 safaris a day for 3 days to have a realistic chance at spotting tigers. The landscape is not like Masai mara or Serengeti where you can find tens of lions for sure on any day
We had the time and money for only one safari, which of course was not enough to find the wonderful tigers here. We did spot peacocks, deers and monkeys around
We also heard panic calls from monkeys which had made us more hopeful about tigers, but even long wait didn’t help, and we gave up after some point
Our experience was similar even in Ranthambore later with a single safari- no sightings. You can read about Ranthambore and other sites around like Chamba Gharial sanctuary here
How much do Pench safaris cost
Each jeep costed INR 10k. You can get shared seats at INR 2500 per person if you go to aggregators
You can use official portals of MP Government and Pench National Park. Bookings pen 120 days before departure date
Turia zone has highest demand, followed by Karmajhari and Jamtara. The buffer zones can also provide sightings, don’t write it off
Where we stayed in Pench
Pench Jungle Camp: We loved this place for many reasons
They were helpful in arranging safaris, of course subject to general availability
They had tents which had a rustic feeling. Monkeys enjoyed jumping on these!
The tents were spaced out
The nights were so clear, the best I have seen in my life, equaling the one at Te Anau New Zealand. We saw milky way clearly and many shooting stars throughout the night