October 23, 2023

Monday, 11:00 PM

Hotel Savitri Signature,

Narsinghpur, 

Madhya Pradesh, 

India

Today was mostly about safari, travel, and having tough time finding a decent place to stay, and since I wasn’t feeling all that well today, the day felt harder than it was. I am writing this pretty late in the day for the reason that I have just settled down in the hotel, having managed to find a place to day late in the evening. And then there was today’s Vlog to be edited and uploaded, which took inordinately long because of a lot of problems with editing and finalizing the final cut. 

I went on a safari at Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, which is India’s 54th tiger reserve, notified as a tiger reserve just over a month ago on September 20, 2023. It is latest to appear on NTCA’s list of tiger reserves, and for that reason it is yet to be friendly to wildlife tourism. The reserve falls under Sagar, Damoh and Narsinghpur districts and parts of Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary are a part of Core Area – I of Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve. I tried contacting the DFO of Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary, but he did not sound very welcoming on the phone, to put it mildly. My experience in interacting with the DFOs of other tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries as part of ATR has been pretty good so far and all of them have been very forthcoming and passionate about not only preserving the wildlife as best as they can but also about improving wildlife tourism and bettering public relations, which go a long way in supporting conservation efforts undertaken by the government.

At the Durgavati Tiger Reserve, the safaris are yet to be properly organized, but that’s probably because it’s a new reserve. However, the reserve itself is extremely beautiful and once the safaris start properly, it will be a great place for wildlife tourism. After the safari, we left for Narsinghpur because we could not find a decent place to stay anywhere near the reserve, and landed here pretty late. That’s it for today.

PS: And the name of that little boy I have been calling Avinash was Abhishek. Apologies for getting it wrong twice over.