Satpura National Park

It is little known. A little bit of a secret treasure but so lovely.

In the middle of Madhya Pradesh, near the Satpura Range of hills and not far from Pachmari, a lovely hill station with breathtaking natural beauty, lies Satpura National Park.

What makes it special is exactly the fact that not many people know about it, you have to cross a reservoir to get to it and the road to it is sufficiently pot holey to put off the average camera clicking camper. This is one of the beautiful homesteads along the road to the national park.

The Denwa river becomes a reservoir and this vast expanse of water which is so attractive to the eye is also a huge attraction for migrating birds. I shall blog about this next.

The park has tiger, leopard, sloth bear, wild dog, Gaur and all types of deer and antelope as well as squirrels, porcupines and hyenas.

And what a thrill it is when the animals appear- this time I want to tell you about about only two- we spotted a sloth bear and its cub and a little further down the road a large male who could have been the dad. We were incredibly lucky because these animals are nocturnal and are very hard to spot but it was dusk on our first day there, the light was fading but there they were in front of us and not in a hurry to move so we feasted our eyes on them for a long while. As my camera decided to go on the blink I have found another picture to show you what they are like. They are big and furry and just unlike anything that I expected to see in the jungle in India. They love termites and often burrow holes in the ground with their long claws, looking for them,which gives away their presence but to see them in the dusk ...well what a treat that was.

We saw a lot of other animals, deer and antelope, some tame and habituated to humans.

The other impressive animal that we encountered here is the Indian Gaur. It is the biggest wild bison in India and it looks like a buffalo with armoured plating on it. This is my picture of a large dark male which sadly was suffering from my camera being on the blink, so blurred, but it is good enough for you to appreciate their size- They are massive and like wandering around in herds.

What I love about them is their white stockinged feet !

 A baby was suckling from its mum and every time the milk outflow lessened he would give his mum a right old headbutt to get it going again.