[17:36 @ Jungle Lodge, Mukki near Kanha National Park, Madhya Pradesh, India]
Finally,
again, I’m back in the embrace of Mother Kanha (“KAA-na” – why do they put the
“h” where they don’t pronounce it?).
After the excruciating 21 hour Delhi-Nagpur-Gondia train ride, which
started around 08:30 yesterday, plus the bumpy 3 hour jeep ride from Gondia to
Mukki, we finally arrived at Pradeep’s Dynamic Tour’s Jungle Lodge at Kanha by
about 10:30 today – over 26 hours in total.
Between the 26 hour plane trip from Vancouver to Delhi and the 26 hour
train trip from Delhi to Kanha, which do I prefer? The plane trip, believe it or not. Still, through these two long rides, Anne, Kim and I had lots of
times to get to know each other better.
The
four hour highway ride was a nasty p.s. to the train trip, not as uncomfortable
and filthy as unnerving and dangerous, with the dare-devil driver almost
hitting pedestrians or street dogs or cows or oncoming traffic about five
hundred times, often with but inches to spare.
This combined with his total inability to take his thumbs off the horn,
whether or not there was anybody other than ourselves to hear it, delivered us
at the Kanha Jungle Lodge in a dazed state.
But,
Kanha, beautiful Kanha, just to see you again makes even the two trips combined
far more than worth it. I cannot deny,
nor describe, how happy I am to be back in your embrace – the place, the
plants, the animals, the people, the good smell, the nice heat, and the wooded
loveliness and rustic familiarity of the Jungle Lodge and the simple villagers
who work there, who feed us and look after our every needs. Ecotourism-wise, Pradeep runs a tight ship.
I
am here to fight for you, don’t you know, my beloved Kanha?
In
fact, were I the one-day-at-a-time kind of guy, I’d be thanking Pradeep
whole-heartedly this day, right now, for putting me here at Kanha instead of
keeping me at cancer inducing Delhi (estimation has it that some 40% of the
people in Delhi will die of respiratory diseases, including lung cancer). Too bad I have the tiger’s future to worry
about, and the best use of my time this week would be to give tiger
conservation presentations twice daily to urban schools in Delhi. I love to see tigers in tiger
reserves. Those precious moments are
monuments in time and experience, but if by crawling back into smoky urban
ghettos to spread the word I could do more good for the tigers than by just
sitting here basking in their glory, I am willing.
But now that I’m here, I reacquainted myself with lodge manager Tarun (“ta-ROON”) Bahti, his beautiful wife Dimple and the other workers, most of whom I have met in previous visits, including Faiyaz Khudsar (“fai-YAZ KOOD-sar”), a lean and forthright man in his late twenties, with an open, honest and earnest face. He has an M.Sc. degree in environmental studies, and is the Tiger Trust field-officer I’ll be working with over the coming weeks. I also met American volunteer Christopher Lindstrom, a handsome and very likeable or even lovable young man with a great sense of humour expressed with a sunny smile. He has served as a Peace Corp volunteer in Mali, West Africa for almost 3 years before finding himself in deep rural India.
Had
a highly constructive informal meeting with Faiyaz, Chris, Anne, Tarun and
Dimple regarding slideshows to tourists and fund raising for Tiger Trust from
tourists. We also discussed the concept
of raising Kanha’s gate charge and have the revenue split between park services
and villagers, a la Chitwan National Park, Nepal. They also took to the idea of solar-cooking with great
enthusiasm. Tomorrow, we will do a
field test of the portable solar oven that we have brought from Canada.
Now,
the group has taken the [Champions of the Wild – Bengal Tiger] video to show
the free-school children, some of whom I’ve befriended in 1997. Love to see them again. But I’ll wait till tomorrow.
And
perhaps tomorrow, in Kanha National Park, I will meet a tiger I’ve met before.