MY VISIT TO NAGPUR CITY.

Nagpur is synonymous with ORANGES.....BETTER KNOWN AS ORANGE CITY. It's the 2nd capital and the 3rd largest city of Maharashtra.
It's quite a bustling city and well  spread across.

MY VISIT :
 Though , often as I kept travelling from Mumbai to my home state ,kolkata, I came across this city of Nagpur , but this time , it was my 2nd visit to the city. My husband stays a month every year during his training Camp at Nagpur Cant  . But I hardly could make it  everytime. But this time as we intended to go for a road trip across Madhya Pradesh ,  I planned to drop in as guest at his army unit , to join those Men in uniform and share a day experience with them. I landed at Dr.B.R Ambedkar  International airport around 8pm,  and my husband was there to receive me....and then off for a long drive upto his Unit at Nagpur Cant. Area.......It's almost more than 17 yrs that I last visited this place...Lots of changes, well furnished guest house and we'll spread food layout at its dinning hall.....what a lovely  evening to share with all those Men in Uniform.
Had to wake up early next morning, as my husband planned to give me a short trip across the Nagpur City  , on  our way to kahna  national park in M.P. ......Even my husband too was in relaxed mood after a month long rigorous training and that now he got his Lt.Col title too....Morning , after breakfast , I just had a walk around the premise of the unit , until our vehicle arrived....it's time to say goodbye to each one them for their awesome hospitality. ...
 We planned to visit RAMTEK  and KHINDSI  LAKE , before we push off for Kahna national park. ....and maybe on our way back from our tour of South East M.P  , I will check out the Dragon  Temple , and Deekshabhoomi. ...that's our plan .
Ramtek is located on a hill and was once known as Ramagiri......The drive upto the top of the hill was really an awesome experience....Once on top of the hill ,  it houses a fort , Jain  temples ,  Ram temple and Poet Kalidas  smarak. ...After parking our car , we had to walk up the stone steps to the top of the fort....Since pujas  are performed  in the Ram temple, inside the fort ...we had to remove our shoes and walk across....really a nice place to visit...very well maintained  and the view from the top was really awesome.....Besides religious  flavours,  it was giving a old world charm.After exploring every corner of the fort ,we walked down to the Kalidas  Smarak. ...it's a monument in his name but well  built. It's worth visiting ....the paintings from kalidas's stories was nice going thru....

After RAMTEK we headed for Khinsi  lake....KHINDSI  lake is a large water reserviour  situated within the Satpura Hill Range.its very popular as a water sport destination. ....The entry ticket to the complex was 25 rs each ...bit more , I personally felt....As we strolled around the park area , I saw school  children coming for picnic , people going for boat ride in the lake , but we had hardly much time to spend there as it was long way off to Kahna national park. 

It was on our way back from Madhya  trip that we stopped our at SAUSAR,the orange land ....as we drove from Panchmarhi to Nagpur.  Couldn't stop our curiosity  to make a stopover at some orange orchard by the highway....it was total fun to fluck oranges ( offcourse with owners permission ) and have it.....It's just yummy taste....the cotton fields by its side was also an attraction......Spend quite sometime in the Orange Orchards at Sausar..before we headed for the Duration Temple close to Kamptee. After my prayers and darshan at the temple we drove off to the DRAGON  PALACE TEMPLE. IT'S A BUDDHIST TEMPLE, VERY BEAUTIFULLY MADE . As we it's design and it's accostics of Buddha mantra....oh , I loved  the resonating  prayers in the evening sky......Such Soulful sound echoing across the air and enriching it's environment. 

We were now literally  getting late to reach the airport for our flight to mumbai back home ....so had to drop the idea to visit the Deekshabhoomi,  as the madening  traffic of Nagpur is well known and talked about.....Had to get myself a box of SANDRA BARFI or orange sweets,before I left the city ......Just had a great time .

KAHNA NATIONAL PARK , AN ADVENTURE TRIP.

As we planned our first exploration trip to Madhya Pradesh,a visit to KAHNA NATIONAL PARK was an obvious  choice.....We started our journey from Nagpur. The total distance was suppose to be 260kms approx. We left the city of Nagpur , bit early ie 9am....as we thought to reach Kahna before it gets dark.Had got our bookings done online prior  ie.both resort stay as well the safari to see the national park next morning.

Route :Nagpur-Tiroda-Gondia-Balaghat-Baihar-Mukki-kahna.

INTRODUCTION :

The total area of the park is 940sq  km.
Best time to visit :Feb -June.
Kahna is home to over 1000 species of flowering plants.The lowland forest is a mix of Shal and other mixed forest but the Highland forest are tropical moist dry deciduous type.
Swamp deer,Indian gaur, spotted deer, sambar, Barking deer., barasingha  has made it their home.Presently , tiger conservation project is on but the national park is too huge to locate a tiger population of just a handful. 

MY STORY:

We had our booking at Gawa  kahna Resort , which is on the other side of kathia  gate of the kahna reserve forest....After starting from Nagpur city, we visited Ramtek  fort on the way...The Adani  Tiroda  power project that came on our way was really an impressive one...heard of it before but for the first time got to have a chance to glance upon a world  class project.....Road , all across is too good to drive down. Balaghat stretch is really nice with Babul  trees all around.....just was thinking in mind that it's just the beginning of our JUNGLE TRIP ACROSS MADHYA PRADESH. ...
We reached our resort around sunset almost...looks like a brand new property owned by Madhya Pradesh tourism. ....really a classy one......As we checked in ,I glanced upon the Herbal garden owned by MPTDC  , and wanted to check out after getting freshened up.Though was bit tired after the long drive but my curiosity keeps pushing me.....we were assisted by an employee of the resort to the Herbal garden...offcourse , knew many of the plants there but few like Hing plant (ashophotida ) and NuxVomica plant was totally new to me.Though , I came across Camphor,  clove,  Cardamom, Rudrasha plant at our herbal garden trip at Andaman Island  trip earlier years ago. But truely  interesting one.....Had early dinner ....it was quite chilling cold. ..just wanted to rest in the cozy comfort of our room in the jungle....it was pindrop  silence all around , sometimes a little light blinked  thru the bushes...really fun !!!
After watching TV for a while , we were off to sleep.
A beautiful  morning in the jungle...Had to wake up early as we had to start for the safari  and reach mukki  gate by 6.30am. ...There was lot of confusion,  it seems the payment we did online for the safari was just a token booking of 1500 rs...now if the resort people has to escort us to mukki gate we have to pay 600 rs + jungle entrance  fee of 2500 + 300 rs guide fee...this are all for the Safari of the kahna  park....We had no choice  but to give in to their  demand of payments.....but just curtail that 600 rs instead planned to take our own vehicle upto mukki gate and then take on the safari  vehicle....as we started in the dark ,  we just missed the route as hardly any marking .....we drove off almost 30kms off into the deep core ,  ....just don't know but hardly could take any help for the route from anyone......we were trying GPRS on our mobile but bad luck...no connectivity....Was feeling so so upset ....then we just took a total U turn to reach the same place we started from.....Now it was slowly clearing up...an old lady from the village then guided us to take the proper route to Mukki Gate. ...Finally we reach mukki gate which was just 7kms from were we were staying ....anyways,  early morning had a jungle darshan. .....
Now we changed over to the Safari vehicle....As we entered the park premise,  I remembered my visit to Kaziranga  National Park in Assam...and so was our expectations too high...offcourse this jungle of Sal Trees , too is really impressive but I really had a big doubt about TIGER......as we drove across , spotted varieties of Deers and Gaur, Few birds....but no monkeys, elephants and forget Tiger...the guide was simply  misguiding us with stories ;I was really getting  upset about those stupid behaviour of the guides and the way they were fooling tourists.....maybe locales  were given jobs as guides  . but neither knows the names of the trees in the jungle neither birds....anyways had a fun time filming the beautiful jungle of kahna in the morning  sunshine....
At 11am the safari was over and we had to push back to our resort , and after lunch had the plans to drive off to AMARKANTAK. ...

PANCHMARHI, THE TINY LITTLE HILL STATION IN SATPURA BIOSPHERE

PANCHMARHI , considered the queen of Satpura Biosphere is located at a height of 1100 mts in a valley of the Satpura range in Hoshangabad  district. It can be easily reached from Jabalpur.

Route: Jabalpur-gotagoan -Narshinghpur -karelia -pipariya -matkuli -PANCHMARHI. 
Places to see in panchmarhi:
Pandav  Caves, boat club lake,Bee falls,Dhupgarh etc...it's a rocky terrain , so every stretch is picture perfect.Many Hindi  movies have been pictured around this location , like ASHOKA, CHAKRAVYUH, TARKIEB  etc.

My visit : 
On our way from Jabalpur to Nagpur , we planned a stop over at Panchmarhi. ..Had our booking done prior  at MPTDC resort...there are lots of hotels around but I found the MPTDC  property well located....should have had planned for a little longer stay. As we started our climb on to the Satpura range, there was chill in the air....very beautiful roads and those trees adorning both side of the roads ,made a picturesque drive across....as such , immediately after we entered Narshinghpur district , the cultivation all across looked so soothing to our eyes.....just loved those coriander fields all across. Now that we are onto the rocky stretch of Satpura range , it too , had a different look altogether. It was mid day that we checked in to our resort.....soon after freshening up and having our lunch , we planned to go across for our visit to chota  Mahadeo  temple some 10kms drive into the biosphere reserve filled with Tendu trees....Oh ,  those monkeys....it's a  really a problematic  issue all around....
What I felt is that mostly people come here for relaxation as tourists were just strolling around...nothing much to do....a portion is Cantonment  area...old British  style bunglows. ...pretty much an old world charm, spreading the essence of peace and tranquillity. Saw people making their way from papariya  to chota Mahadeo, with immense  faith...but ,we took our drive across the biosphere jungle areas to the temple....beautiful Cave temple of Shiva...very well maintained except for the monkeys...heard that devotees,  come all the ways to put Trishul, when their wishes come true here....there were few more cave temples around but I hardly had the energy to trek up and down the jungle stretches to see them all....to visit the highest cave temple , one requires a whole day trekking up and down the hills , thru the jungle stretch. .no proper road.
Just couldn't visit the Bee falls ,as it's still tougher trekking up and down the rocky slopes.Now I realised , that if someone plans for panchmarhi,  so be mentally prepared for long treks and should have at least 3/4 days in hand to explore the whole region , but unfortunately, we had non.... After spending the afternoon in the biosphere  jungles and watching beautiful sunset across the range , we had to return back to the town centre and check out the market areas...but , was bit disappointed to find people from Kashmir selling their stuffs and punjabi  shopkeeper selling all ludhiana woollen stuffs...nothing locale....anyways , we headed for the resort finally as we were damme tired.

It was a beautiful  chilling morning when we woke up the next day.....so fresh and clean air to breathe. ...it was so relaxing,felt like just spend hours in the beautiful  backyards of the resort just doing nothing....but those monkeys, just drove us crazy....Had to rush for breakfast, and also had to get ready fast as we had plans to visit another Shiva Cave temple in the rocks called JATASHANKAR ....it's the same place we're ASHOKA movie was picturized. 
    So we just checked out of the resort and headed for the shiva cave, hardly did I knew that it will be such a long trek through those Sedimentary  rock hills....our driver , who accompanied  us ,kept telling me that it's just a few more meters walk ....but.....truly ,  it's very very beautiful;I was excited to see those metamorphosed  FOSSILISED  rocks , .....I loved the jungle walk in the morning sun .....at last , it's another some 50 steps down to the cave shrine....it's so steep....wondering how deep we have come down ...hope we be able to climb up....surely a great way to lose weight...ha ha .....after darshan, we sat their for a while and watch the rocks....its worth its name JATASHANKAR. ....As we slowly climbed up ,  saw small shops selling ayurvedic  stuffs.....tried to smell a few and did purchase a facepack of Daruharidra, which helps to remove any type of blemish on the skin when applied....Now , it was time to say goodbye to panchmarhi, as we intended to reach Nagpur by sunset.....Overall nice experience of this tiny little town.