Sanjay Dubri Tiger Reserve

 Continued from my earlier post.

Our visit to Sanjay-Dubri Tiger Reserve was planned on the next day after our arrival at Parsili.

The resort had arranged for the vehicle and requisite permits from the forest department and requested us to be ready to depart at 6 am.

As it had rained during the night and was raining again in the morning, we had doubts about our proposed safari materialising thinking that the tracks must have become muddy and slippery.  However, we found the jeeps waiting for us at the appointed time and the driver allayed our apprehension.  We had hired two jeeps each having seating for 6 visitors plus a guide and the driver.

The entrance to the reserve is 15 kilometres from the resort and the place is called Chamradol.  The area near the resort is called Baradol.  The nomenclature has distinct casteist connotations.  The road goes through farmlands and you find some small villages alongside as you approach the entrance.

At the entrance formalities were completed and each jeep was assigned a guide.  Thus the final cost per vehicle comes to ₹4480, comprising of permit cost ₹1500 plus jeep hire cost of ₹2500 and guide fee of ₹480.

The guide talked of a peripheral and a core zone as we entered the park and the jeeps entered the shallow stream of Banaas and crossed over.  I think the two zones perhaps refer to the Sanjay National Park and Sanjay-Dubri Wildlife Sanctuary.

It was early morning and pretty cold and a little windy in the jungle area.  We were not carrying woollens but face masks took the sting away by protecting the nose and most of our faces.  As the sun gradually rose and shone, it became very pleasant.  The air was very fresh and invigorating.  We didn't find any mud on the tracks despite the rains in the preceding night.

The guide pointed out to large number of Sal and Tendu trees around us.  The Tendu leaves are used in beedis and the Sal or Sakhu is considered valuable as a building material and for furniture.

The jungle abounded with deer of various variety, Neelgai and langoors.  The guides also drew our attention to certain birds here and there.

Everyone was filled with anticipation as the guide pointed out that we were in the core zone and there was a possibility of sighting a lion.  He showed us some pugmarks and also a heap of tiger poop but the search for the tiger kept proving futile.

On the way we met some security people and learnt that a tigress had laid a litter and was hiding with the cubs somewhere.

We kept moving on with the dry leaves on the track pressed by the vehicles shining with a metallic glint in the sunshine.  The guide ultimately blamed our failure to see a tiger on the rains last night and drove us to one of the watch towers.  We climbed to the top of the tower and had an aerial view of the forest all around us.  The guide pointed out that part of it extended into the neighbouring state of Chhattisgarh.

We roamed around for some more time and decided to call it quits when it was almost 10:30 in the morning.  The vehicles took us back to the resort where we had a hearty breakfast which the resort was considerate enough to serve despite the timing being over.

We took note of the fact that we were only 100 kilometres away from Bandhavgarh National Park, but decided not to overshoot our plans and kept it as our next destination whenever the time came.

A Visit To Parsili Resort And Sanjay Dubri National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary

It was a large family group that planned to visit the Sanjay National Park and Dubri Wildlife Sanctuary in MP, commonly known as Sanjay Dubri Tiger Reserve.  One subgroup resides at Shaktinagar, the place famous for two of the mega thermal power projects of NTPC, and so we all decided to converge at this place because of its proximity with the destination.  From there we departed by cars to Parsili Resort which is about 15 kms from the Tiger Reserve and is run by MP Tourism.  The distance between the resort and Shaktinager is approximately 160 kms which translates to four hours of drive from Shaktinagar.  Both the ends, except a small initial portion, lie in the District of Sidhi.  

The large unpopulated stretches of land along the drive with greenery, trees and hillocks was a view that we often miss in our populous state of Uttar Pradesh.  Though we passed through quite a few small towns, we could get tea only at a point almost midway at a place called Sarai.  The tea was served in paper cups so small that it reminded one of a small tequila shot and one had to take two or more cups to satisfy the craving.

Parsili Resort is a wonderful and professionally run place.  The main building consists of the reception area and a dining hall separated by an atrium that houses a small lounge.  The first floor has a few rooms for guests.  Then there is an adjoining area having a dozen or so 'huts.'  You may think of each hut as a set of two independent rooms, each for two persons with an attached bath and a balcony / dressing room.  The huts are clean and modestly but tastefully furnished.  The resort is surrounded by trees forming a small forest like patch on the sides and you have the Banaas river flowing right behind the boundary at the back of the resort.  There are stairs leading to the river and the river was only a little more than ankle deep at most places.  The kids had much fun wading through the river to the other bank and back.  I may add that occasionally a group of monkeys may descend upon the hut complex and it is advisable to keep the balcony door and window closed.

In the afternoon all of us gathered in one of our rooms and a round of Tambola.  Tea and pakoras were ordered and we found the room service good.

The river is towards west of the resort and sunset makes for a breathtaking view and some nice photographs.  The resort had also organized a song and dance performance by a small group of tribals near the entrance on the eastern side.

The food was good and homely, and the only complaint was dysfunctional WiFi promised by the resort.  The technician was to come from Bhopal and there was no chance of it getting repaired before our departure.

If you are visiting Parsili, don't forget to carry at least one phone with a Jio SIM.  No other network, including BSNL, works in the area!  Though, if the WiFi were working, you could make and receive a normal non-WhatsApp call from the hotel compound using a phone that has WiFi calling feature which is currently supported by Airtel and  perhaps VI too.  One person in our group, having an Airtel connection could do so when he was connected to a hotspot activated on a phone with Jio connection.

Several power outages came as a surprise as MP is a power surplus state.  It wasn't too hot so we didn't mind the AC switching off.  Only light and fan were on power backup.  I decided to switch on the geyser in the bathroom to ensure availability of hot water in the morning even if there was another outage at that time.

As night descended, it started raining.  It made a pattering sound on the trees surrounding the campus.  We had a good night's sleep and when we got up early in the morning for the Safari, it was still or perhaps again raining.

The next post will be about the Safari.

For some pictures, you may visit here Pictures.

I Got My First Dose of Covishield Today

 Like most of us I failed to register on the Cowin site in the morning today.  The problem that I and most of us faced, was non-delivery of the verification code through SMS.  So I gave up and took my car, that had been serviced yesterday, for a test drive.  I drove up to a nearby hospital, Shekhar Hospital, and walked in to enquire about the vaccination.  Enquiry revealed that Shekhar was offering Covaxin.  I was further told that all slots for the day were taken up and that I could register for a slot on 4th March.  It seems there will be a two day break for taking stock and fine-tuning the processes.  I drove back home without registering.

Then I got a phone call from my nephew, who is a journalist and was doing a story on vaccination at Ram Manohar Lohia Institute, now renamed Atal Bihari Bajpayee University of Medicine.  He said that the queue there wasn't too long and things seemed to be proceeding smoothly.  He advised us to visit the place before they ran out of vaccine stock.  I drove down to the University with my wife and sister, all three of us armed with our Aadhaar cards.

There were several booths set up there and the process was like this: 

a) Get a token from the reception desk giving you the booth number and serial number, 

b) Go to the booth, fill out a card giving your name and contact details, 

c) Present the card and your Aadhaar to a person who will register you, 

d) After successful registration enter the booth and get the jab, check that the nurse has entered the date for the second jab on the card,

e) On exit get your particulars entered in a manual register maintained by another person, 

f) Wait for half an hour, and if there are no adverse effects, sign the manual register and depart.

To ensure that you don't face any hiccups, keep these things in mind:

• The jab is given in the shoulder muscle, so men should wear a half-sleeved or sleeveless T and women should have a sleeveless top.  Else, you may be asked to take off the shirt or the blouse.
• While filling out the card take care to mention the same phone number that is registered with your Aadhaar card, else the registration may fail.  I may add that no biometric or SMS based authentication was carried out.

A very interesting observation was that a couple of people who had successfully registered through website or the app, were sent away by the person doing the registration.  They were told to wait for a message from the system telling them the date and venue for their vaccination.  One gentleman was very upset at this, kept arguing and holding up the queue, and finally left saying that he will never set foot there again!  Same was the case with an important looking lady who was escorted by two policemen.  It seems she could seek some intervention and get the jab.  There was just one more case of jumping the queue assisted by someone who seemed to be a staff.

But for the general aversion to forming orderly queues, things went well and it seems that the walk-in is a better alternative to pre-registration.  The person who carries out the registration hardly takes two minutes per person.

Before I close, I must mention a very strange issue in the systems.  Today the system was rejecting all those born in the year 1960!  It seems the programmer has used greater than 60 as a condition instead of greater than or equal to.  If so, this is too silly a mistake to be made by a programmer.

I have already received an SMS saying that I have been successfully vaccinated and also giving a link to view the certificate on the site.  The certificate is fine except that it mentions my year of birth as 31 making me 90 years old!  It is incorrect in the case of my wife and my sister too.  This is puzzling as our DOBs are correctly registered in the Aadhaar database.

And finally, it is nearly 5 hours after I got the jab and I am feeling fit and fine.  The only regret is that I could not go for the same vaccine as our PM, but then I now have a tinge of Oxford within me. :)

Wishing you happy inoculation.