Jabalpur, Kanha and Bandhavgarh National Parks

Well, after Khajuraho we contiued our trip to Jabalpur, a bit in the south. The city is busy and dirty as all cities in India and has no attraction. However outside of it are the Marble rocks, a marble canyon and a waterfall, and the city is the base to go to the 2 National Parks in the area, the Kanha and Bandhavgarh.


In the marble canyon we had an expensive boat ride, we were the only tourists. Afterwards we walked to the waterfall where we had a nice view of the canyon.


Well, as the city doesn't has anything of interest we continued directly to Kathia, the village just outside the Kanha National Park. This place is famous for the tiger population which lives inside, it should be more than 100!
Unfortunately going there wasn't worth it, the entrance to the park is only possible by jeep and this is a very expensive adventure. As no other tourists were around, we left the place without seeing the park.
The village with the houses painted in blue and white are also nice and in the hotel many monkies visited us, it's funny to see them eating and playing around (this race is much more quite than the other agressive one).


As walking inside the national park isn't possible, we did it outside. The landscape is nice, but we couldn't see any tiger... just spiders and 2 jackals.



As the Kanha National Park wasn't a good place to visit, we thought it would be better in Bandhavgarh, another park more in the north and also famous for the tigers. To get to this national park, to Tala (the village in side it) is even more complicated than to the other one, but at the end we reached it. Compared with the Kanha, we also found quite a lot of tourists and so we could share a jeep on the 2nd day.
Actually we already wanted to go on a jeep safari the 1st day, but as the administration here in India is complicated and normally not understandable (for western tourists nothing is possible, for Indian one's all), they didn't let us in at 6 o'clock in the morning. So, we went for a walk outside the village, which was very nice, due to the high grass everywhere however we couldn't see any animals except monkies.
As we wanted to go on another walk in the afternoon, the guards wanted to stop us (the only tourists) as it isn't allowed anymore at this time... Another strange thing and when we asked why, they couldn't give us any answer. Already enough from the missed jeep safari in the morning and the other Indian national park, we disregared the guards and continued our way (the same as we did in the morning).
Well, finally on the 2nd day we managed to get on the jeep and so entering the park. However we lost more than half an hour waiting in front of the gate because of a mistake of the park office... at the end we also missed a tiger, we arrived 5 minutes late and the jeeps before us could see one crossing the street... Again bad luck, except an expensive tour and the same animals as always, we couldn't see anything more.


On our walk through high grass, a good place for the tigers to hide themselves, bad for us. Officially this area isn't part of the park, but just a few meters away from it and open for animals.


On our jeep safari, we started at 5.30 in the morning and we stayed from 6.30 to 9.45 in the park. The landscape is nice, but the animals always the same one's: deers, monkies and jackals...