Bandhavgarh, the best jungle date till now

We started off from jabalpur via road and p our pre booked guest house in bandhavgarh forest guest House around 2 pm, after which had a hearty delicious lunch made by the cook there. We had our jeep waiting for the afternoon safari scheduled at 3 pm right outside our room.
We started and soon entered from the Magdhi gate (Zone 2),honestly i didn't hear much about the gate and its sightings of tigers but according to our guide, there had been a sighting if a tigress and her cubs. We went excited and with crossed fingers. Also i knew for a fact that sightings of different animals including tigers could be more in the afternoon than in the morning. So off we went, our guide was pretty interesting, kept us engaged with his knowledge and amazing experience of the jungle. It was exciting ,though we didn’t spot any tiger but heard the “calls” which the animals make as a warning to the other animals.We saw loads of spotted deer, some Sambars, a crest eagle (one with a huge crest on its head).It was a good trip as it was my first on a Jeep safari where you had the entire vehicle to yourself.

The other day I got up at 5 am as we had a morning safari scheduled for 5:45 am ,this time from Gate 1 ( Tala gate,where there are reportedly lot of sightings of tigers). I had a gut feeling at least now I will definitely spot one tiger. We hopped up on our safari at 5:45, met our new guide Mr Sukhnidhan Gupta , a wonderful person who had extensive 20 years experience as was giving us information on every tree, every bird , every tiger scratch made on a tree. After spotting few birds, deer , wild boar etc , we came across an entire group of Bisons .When we crossed them a little further our guide recived a call that there had been a tiger sighting around 10 kms back where we had crossed a stream. He told our driver to reverse the jeep and we literally “flew” the jeep to spot the tiger near the stream. We were just about to reach the spot but alas ! we again missed the Tiger. This time we were more than determined to spot the tiger than before. After a short break of coffee, we again hopped on our jeep and started , though this tie I thought I have lost all my chances to spot a tiger, but just after few kms , we noticed around 4 jeeps just stuck to the ground with huge cameras rolling over on one side , we moved our jeep further and lo ! and behold , we spotted not one, not two ,but FIVE tigers, resting on the same spot after a hearty meal, A mother and her four cubs,we were struck with mesmerisation for over 40 mins there ,capturing all the poses of the tigress and her cubs as one of them got up for a few minutes, and then again lied down on another spot, and then again carried on with the journey where some kms further we spotted a herd of wild boars, at least 5 of them who ran away seeing our jeep.it was the best safari till date in my life where I spotted 5 TIGERS TOGETHER and they were beauty I tell you!.
Pro tip : visit the bandhavgarh Park during March to May and that too in the Tala Zone preferably, as there definitely you will get to see the tigers, at least one you will be for sure.
We bid goodbye to our guide whom we discovered during our course of conversation has written 100s of poems on jungles which he ,some of them, recited to us as well. They were too good for words. When we asked him whether he leart them from somewhere , he replied – sab jungle ne sikhaya hai, saab (the jungle has taught me everything.)
Definitely a visit to remember for a lifetime