The unforgettable pench experience. 🐆

I hope you know me enough till now Or you probably will after looking at my profile. I love visiting national parks so much inspite of the fact that I live in one.( buffer zone of satpura tiger reserve) but it's not enough for me. I still crave to be inside a forest surrounded by wildlife. It's my happy place.
So just another winter morning, sitting in my balcony and scrolling through my instagram I came upon this picture of a melanistic leopard cub spotted in pench national park. That picture stick with me throughout the week. I just knew we have to go pench AGAIN. Did some browsing and got the perfect holiday season - Christmas. I booked the safari and the hotel with a lot of hope, I had a feeling it's gonna be different this time.
We packed our bags and hit the road. After about a 6 hour drive, we reached our destination PENCH JUNGLE CAMP around lunch. We checked in and explore the property. They have a beautiful 50 acre property in the middle of the forest. Sustainable architecture, eco-friendly and surrounded by nature. What more do you want to spend the holidays? Right.
As an added bonus they have an amazing book collection on wildlife at their library. Huh.. Heaven. Am I right!
So after relaxing for the rest of the day, we had a delightful dinner and sat around a bonfire watching the starry night. After chating for a few hours we doze off to sleep.
We woke up to the darkness still lingering outside. Dressed up in woolly jackets and gloves, we packed our cameras and binoculars, had a hot cup of tea and cookies and went to seek for the wilderness.
The gates usually open around 6 am.
Misty morning and chilly breeze wake you right up from your drowsiness. And you see yourself surrounded by nature, breathing the fresh air. And you close your eyes to realize that this is what peace feels like. When you open it, you see animals busy with their routine and doesn't even bothered by your presence. Herds of grazing spotted deer, hopping grey langurs are everywhere. As you go deeper into the forest, you see some exotic birds like ruddy Shelduck, crested hawk eagle, kingfisher, mottled wood owl etc. Better to keep your eyes on the trees as well.
As the sun came up, and the forest get denser you hear alarm calls from deers and langurs. It means a predator is near. We waited and waited. I looked through my binoculars to the spot where our guide was pointing and just for a second I saw a glimpse of something moving in the bushes. But nothing came out. We waited in silence. But without any luck, we moved on. And suddenly when our jeep creeped forward someone shouted 'leopard', we moved around and saw a leopard crossing the road like a flash. He was so quick that we just saw a silhouette. We moved forward feeling blue. Then suddenly a jeep stopped us and the guide pointed out to our left between the rocks emerged a ferocious big cat - a leopard. Mere 4-5 feet from us, slowly climbing the rocks one by one, taking quick looks around to assess the surrounding, he sat on the topmost rock. Just a jump away from our jeep, he sat there basking in the winter sun, yawning every once in a while. Looking around. I was standing on the leftmost side of the jeep, taking as many photos as I could. Peeking out of the camera as I looked into his eyes, a shiver ran down my spine. He was so close I couldn't look for too long. He sat there for a good 20 minutes. As more and more jeeps were stopping by. He got up and disappeared into the forest. That was liberating experience for me. My first big cat sighting in last 3 years.
As we moved on, we saw different animals like wild dogs, indian jackal, sambhar, wild boar and bison. With this the morning safari ended.
We went back to the resort, had a flavoursome lunch and some of us went to our rooms to relax. I went to the library instead picked up a book called the leopard's tale by Jonathan and angela scotts. The afternoon went by and the evening tea was served in the garden we sat out discussing about yet another book called famous tigers of india. The book mentioned about every famous tiger in various national parks and tiger reserve of the country, it includes machli from ranthambhore, spotty from bandhavgarh and collarvali from pench etc. It was a good read. At about 7 pm, they had a movie screening - A 2005 BBC documentary called Tiger: spy in the jungle. It was amazing, they shot by using elephants and mobile tree trunk looking spy cams. I wish I could see it. After the movie, we had our dinner and went straight to bed.