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. ...