Bandhavgarh Live: New Sights and Sounds

On the afternoon of the second day, the weather seemed to cool down, but we had no premonition of how much cooler it was going to get. We were roaming the forest with not much hope, wishing it was hotter so the watering holes wouldn’t be as deserted as they were now. We pushed our way through the sandy mud track winding its way through dry bamboo, until Vikas pointed to a dead log. We searched for that little bird he claimed was sitting on the log – a savannah nightjar.

I was overjoyed to see this rare sight of a nightjar during the day. Nightjars, true to their monikers, are in their element after the sun has called it a day. Their whirling wings when they fly close to the ground remind me of the blades of a miniature fan. I had only seen nightjars once in the early hours of dawn, their wings in heightened activity, looking to make the most of the little time they had before the sun broke out of the horizon. When Vikas promised us on the first day that we would get to photograph nightjars this time, I was expecting it to be an after-sunset affair. But watching this nightjar at half past four in the afternoon was a complete surprise. Vikas, as always, had been as good as his word.

Just half an hour after the nightjar sighting, raindrops began to fall on our heads. On our drive from the railway station, we had been told that rain and storm had raged on for a week, to the extent of uprooting trees in the forest, before our arrival, but the skies had now cleared up for good. But it now seemed that rain gods hadn’t finished with Bandhavgarh yet. As we huddled inside the Gypsy with its top pulled down, we broke out into exclamations of wonder and joy at the delightful sight around us. Despite the thought of diminishing chances of seeing tigers anymore, we were overjoyed at this unique experience of watching the forest getting soaked to the deep in freshly prepared water.
Our chances of sighting tigers near waterholes in Tala practically washed out, we decided to go to Khitauli the next morning and try our luck with a tigress who was said to be seen often with her two cubs.
Khitauli was nothing short of a revelation. The scenic beauty of this least visited range of Bandhavgarh is simply breathtaking. The forest looked fresh that morning after the evening’s downpour and was abuzz with birdcalls. A long stretch of road through the lovely woods took us to a wide river that looked exceptionally picturesque. The white sandy riverbed transported me to the memory of Corbett National Park’s River Ramganga.

Video here.

Unfortunately the tigress eluded us, but we were so excited at the beautiful sights and sounds of this new range that we had discovered that we forgot all about our objective of seeing the tigress. After a brief rest at the quaint little rest house on the bank of the river, we left Khitauli with plans of returning the next day.