As usual we planned and re-planned multiple times, booked and rescheduled multiple times then set on last weekend to Jim Corbett. (Timely update so that I dont forget!! otherwise a trip to Manali is still sitting aside needs an update from my memory).
Accompanied by my parents from Chennai who have come on a very short stint to be with us, we set for a 3 day trip. Of which 2 days went off only in travel. Saturday morning started from Delhi in our Herbie err... Duster fully loaded, literally. Planned to start off by early morning 6 am. But slow and steady works, piling last minute activities, repacking yet again, dumping teeny weeny stuff, and then why-not-just-one-dosa-each munching :), all ended up at 8, not at all surprised. That gave a small privilege of having the maid wash the vessels !! ;-) All went fine until we crossed Akshardam. The Noida-Gaziabad-Hapur bye pass was a pain. It is a narrow highway with loaded traffic from locals passing by. It so reminded me of Chennai highways. It took some time for us to pass through. Then came the river Ganga at Garmukteshwar. It hurts a LLLLLLLLOOOOOOOTTTTTTTT to see the shrunken Ganga with a thin stream flowing in one corner. If Great Ganges herself is having this condition, cant think of the dryness in Cauvery. Already several states have declared drought. Alo! the heavy rainfall of Chennai is untraceable within not even 3 months. Something ought to be done. It is a sin to waste even one drop of water. Not sure how much of awareness people have got in this regard. Seriously thinking of starting a group that can act upon something like spreading awareness or deepening the ponds or lakes like the ones in Velachery and Pallikaranai.. anybody??
Anyway am digressing. We kept going towards Moradabad. After that our Linda, I mean our GPS (interestingly we have named any GPS as Linda for well, no particular reason) took a detour which was almost exactly opposite to the direction we were heading. It started going towards a place called Amroha. The Here Maps also said the same route. We would have headed for like 1 km, something made us to enquire before proceeding further. We were informed to take U turn to catch the NH once again and proceed towards Kashipur which is a better road than this Amroha, and the best part was that the Tea vendor told us that "haan.. Internet sirf is maarg dhikayega" (yes, internet will show only this route).
So U-turn to NH74 and it was a better route indeed. Reached Kashipur and then to Ramnagar after having lunch. We packed our lunch from home, so not sure of how much of good food you would get enroute. But you have options -you have Bikanerwala, KFC, MCD, Sagar Ratna on the way plus few small scale dhabas. Few big restaurants also there. Meanwhile we tried to trace the route, all the route boards in UP are loaded with posters, especially of BJPs. You need to decipher the names that are vaguely appearing, apparently posters not fitting them so well. (The one in the picture is an exception as we can see Delhi at least. Dont know what is hidden in the right hand side of the board) Arnab... where are you...
Ramnagar is a cute town which seems to be very busy and a central place for towns around it. The Corbett National Park's forest office is located in Ramnagar. You get all kind of approvals here only (of course online). We had already booked for a jeep permit at Durga Devi entrance. But we didnt know that it was only permit and jeep booking was yet to be done. There are sooooooo many people with the green jeep with various rates available for you to book. We did one through KMVN for Rs. 1750 - the minimum fare. There are hell lot of hotels for lodging available, including one inside the forest managed by the department. But we have this Sterling resort, so booked a lovely 1 Bedroom apartment which totally was onto my satisfaction. It was the usual old modeled one with kitchen and oven unlike the ones constructed by them these days. Enroute Ramnagar to Marchula, we saw few huge sambar deers that seem like its fur being burnt. And also some fire like sparkling on the hills. To our shock it was indeed the same forest fire that was reported in the media. It hurt so much to see that at least 16% of forest has been destroyed, it was like for one week and we didnt know about it until that day. See here for few more hurting news :-(
Anyway, we had permit for sunday early morning 5:45 am entry. So crawled in bed early and got up early the next day. Since Sterling was after the Lohachur area (Durga Devi gate), we traced back our path for like 30 minutes. There is no mobile signal except Vodafone (hey though they are costly and non-Indian, it has better service I think. Even during the Chennai floods I was not able to reach ANY of the mobile fones. It was a vodafone number that I was able to reach first, after like 2 days) So with hope we just waited for our jeep to come. By 5:40 am sharp, he did reach. It took few minutes to do the checking of papers and then zoom... err... our jeep started
slowly. We got soooo excited... yes, it was an ultimate experience, really. I have been to Bannergatta (Bangalore) to watch the tigers through a closed bus, to Thekkady (Kerala) through boat ride, Mudhumalai (Tamilnadu) through Elephants... but this is the first time on an open jeep, daring to face the sher khan face to face (which did not happen however but look at us brave people, hey!)
It was twilight time. The coolness and pan darkness was something excellent. Breathed through the fresh oxygen amidst tall trees. With eyes on both sides of the forest we were trying to spot birds and animals. Saw two pheasants flying here and there - we have seen them in cage at Delhi zoo. There were few sambar deers, barking deers and spotted deers. We saw two spotted deer looking for food; pheasant family along with its chick.
There were two barking deers, one was starring at us and the other was munching on grass. So cautious... so curious its eyes were piercing us. Dont know what happened, he/she got alerted for some reason. It vroomed like an arrow not just he did, he alerted his pal too in a jiffy and she too started running. It was very cute.
Kept riding for a long while,hoping to see something. But alas none. Except for few cute birds like White tailed tropical bird, emerald dove, et al. and few langur monkeys (totally harmless and cute), deer we didnt come across anything interesting. We had one guide appointed by the department who spoke English and Hindi. With his broken English he explained about the forest and these few birds and animals that we spotted. Like the tamil movie Pammal K Sambandam, that guide all of a sudden said "enakku arul kekkudhu" (I am hearing god's grace) for he said he could smell tigers near by, an alarm in his mind is going it seems. ha ha ha.. no offences, but we didnt buy it. He made us to keep shush, and waited for few minutes and then he said the god has gone.
Then we took some rest in the forest rest house in a place in deep jungle (yummy tea was being prepared there), came back and looked through watch towers and thats all.
The view was awesome as we crossed the Ramganga river surrounded by mountains. As said, there was very little stream of water in the river. Because of the forest fire, there were thick smokes everywhere in the air. We could sense the burning smell. There was so much mist everywhere.
So after 3 hours, we descended the jeep and our safari is over.
We went back to Sterling, had nice lunch. Took a dip in the chill, dirty swimming pool which kindled our hunger. After hot shower and good food, we took afternoon nap which was like forever. Woke up at around 6 pm... and spent time inside Sterling resort. I had never written comments about Sterling but this particular Tree Top resort was awesome. Its river side view with a mountain near by is tranquil as we stand in the balcony early morning. The lush green and coolness in environment helped to forget the scorching heat of Delhi. The activity room was packed and had Lot of kids who helped to have some fun that evening. After dinner we packed for the next day. Started back next day and thats it!!
Accompanied by my parents from Chennai who have come on a very short stint to be with us, we set for a 3 day trip. Of which 2 days went off only in travel. Saturday morning started from Delhi in our Herbie err... Duster fully loaded, literally. Planned to start off by early morning 6 am. But slow and steady works, piling last minute activities, repacking yet again, dumping teeny weeny stuff, and then why-not-just-one-dosa-each munching :), all ended up at 8, not at all surprised. That gave a small privilege of having the maid wash the vessels !! ;-) All went fine until we crossed Akshardam. The Noida-Gaziabad-Hapur bye pass was a pain. It is a narrow highway with loaded traffic from locals passing by. It so reminded me of Chennai highways. It took some time for us to pass through. Then came the river Ganga at Garmukteshwar. It hurts a LLLLLLLLOOOOOOOTTTTTTTT to see the shrunken Ganga with a thin stream flowing in one corner. If Great Ganges herself is having this condition, cant think of the dryness in Cauvery. Already several states have declared drought. Alo! the heavy rainfall of Chennai is untraceable within not even 3 months. Something ought to be done. It is a sin to waste even one drop of water. Not sure how much of awareness people have got in this regard. Seriously thinking of starting a group that can act upon something like spreading awareness or deepening the ponds or lakes like the ones in Velachery and Pallikaranai.. anybody??
Anyway am digressing. We kept going towards Moradabad. After that our Linda, I mean our GPS (interestingly we have named any GPS as Linda for well, no particular reason) took a detour which was almost exactly opposite to the direction we were heading. It started going towards a place called Amroha. The Here Maps also said the same route. We would have headed for like 1 km, something made us to enquire before proceeding further. We were informed to take U turn to catch the NH once again and proceed towards Kashipur which is a better road than this Amroha, and the best part was that the Tea vendor told us that "haan.. Internet sirf is maarg dhikayega" (yes, internet will show only this route).
So U-turn to NH74 and it was a better route indeed. Reached Kashipur and then to Ramnagar after having lunch. We packed our lunch from home, so not sure of how much of good food you would get enroute. But you have options -you have Bikanerwala, KFC, MCD, Sagar Ratna on the way plus few small scale dhabas. Few big restaurants also there. Meanwhile we tried to trace the route, all the route boards in UP are loaded with posters, especially of BJPs. You need to decipher the names that are vaguely appearing, apparently posters not fitting them so well. (The one in the picture is an exception as we can see Delhi at least. Dont know what is hidden in the right hand side of the board) Arnab... where are you...
Ramnagar is a cute town which seems to be very busy and a central place for towns around it. The Corbett National Park's forest office is located in Ramnagar. You get all kind of approvals here only (of course online). We had already booked for a jeep permit at Durga Devi entrance. But we didnt know that it was only permit and jeep booking was yet to be done. There are sooooooo many people with the green jeep with various rates available for you to book. We did one through KMVN for Rs. 1750 - the minimum fare. There are hell lot of hotels for lodging available, including one inside the forest managed by the department. But we have this Sterling resort, so booked a lovely 1 Bedroom apartment which totally was onto my satisfaction. It was the usual old modeled one with kitchen and oven unlike the ones constructed by them these days. Enroute Ramnagar to Marchula, we saw few huge sambar deers that seem like its fur being burnt. And also some fire like sparkling on the hills. To our shock it was indeed the same forest fire that was reported in the media. It hurt so much to see that at least 16% of forest has been destroyed, it was like for one week and we didnt know about it until that day. See here for few more hurting news :-(
It was twilight time. The coolness and pan darkness was something excellent. Breathed through the fresh oxygen amidst tall trees. With eyes on both sides of the forest we were trying to spot birds and animals. Saw two pheasants flying here and there - we have seen them in cage at Delhi zoo. There were few sambar deers, barking deers and spotted deers. We saw two spotted deer looking for food; pheasant family along with its chick.
Kept riding for a long while,hoping to see something. But alas none. Except for few cute birds like White tailed tropical bird, emerald dove, et al. and few langur monkeys (totally harmless and cute), deer we didnt come across anything interesting. We had one guide appointed by the department who spoke English and Hindi. With his broken English he explained about the forest and these few birds and animals that we spotted. Like the tamil movie Pammal K Sambandam, that guide all of a sudden said "enakku arul kekkudhu" (I am hearing god's grace) for he said he could smell tigers near by, an alarm in his mind is going it seems. ha ha ha.. no offences, but we didnt buy it. He made us to keep shush, and waited for few minutes and then he said the god has gone.
Then we took some rest in the forest rest house in a place in deep jungle (yummy tea was being prepared there), came back and looked through watch towers and thats all.
The view was awesome as we crossed the Ramganga river surrounded by mountains. As said, there was very little stream of water in the river. Because of the forest fire, there were thick smokes everywhere in the air. We could sense the burning smell. There was so much mist everywhere.
So after 3 hours, we descended the jeep and our safari is over.
We went back to Sterling, had nice lunch. Took a dip in the chill, dirty swimming pool which kindled our hunger. After hot shower and good food, we took afternoon nap which was like forever. Woke up at around 6 pm... and spent time inside Sterling resort. I had never written comments about Sterling but this particular Tree Top resort was awesome. Its river side view with a mountain near by is tranquil as we stand in the balcony early morning. The lush green and coolness in environment helped to forget the scorching heat of Delhi. The activity room was packed and had Lot of kids who helped to have some fun that evening. After dinner we packed for the next day. Started back next day and thats it!!
This is my favourite picture that I shot -
Reminding of the Robert Frost lines -
"The woods are lovely
dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
miles to go before I sleep
and miles to go before I sleep..."
Here, a dozen tips for you -
1) It takes close to 12 hours to travel by road from Delhi to Corbett. So plan your time accordingly. Start early so that the Gaziabad traffic can be avoided. The railway is a better option - the only train Ranikhet express starts from 10:45 pm at Delhi and reaches RamNagar by 5:30 AM.
Also do not club Nainital trip with this one if you are self driving. It is very painful to keep pedaling for another 12 hours up and down
2) Keep going straight in Moradabad road after Hapur byepass. Do not divert as your GPS advises.
3) Safari bookings or Canter bookings, accommodation inside forest are done in Corbett's official website - www.corbettonline.uk.gov.in. There are SEVERAL links in the net which will fool you to believe as official. Dont!
Better option to open this in Mozilla Firefox than any other browser. Bookings happen 15 days or one month before. Do not forget to take print out of the permit.
4) It is pretty cold inside the forest. Bearable and enjoyable but may be good to pack a jacket for your kids
5) Go for the KMVN to book your jeeps so that they are cheap and reliable
6) They offer binocular for rent - Rs. 100 for the 3 hours
7) Interestingly there are several no lots and lots and lots of Curry leaves plant in this area. We pluck few from the resort and wow... they smell sooooooooo good.
8) There are several other games, adventures, etc. which we didnt try. Pls google it out
9) Wear light coloured clothes so that you dont attract the animals - definitely not orange or flourascent colors. Go for light brown, green or blue. Better to avoid perfumes too just in case. If you are a chatter box, it is very less likely that you may spot any animal
10) Please feel responsible and also considerate - it is our forest and they are our fellow creatures. Let us not harm them. Already the forest has suffered the fire unfortunately.
11) Its ok to pack few dry snacks like biscuits, especially for morning trips but keep it low. dont start munching in the jeep itself and attract the monkeys
12) We didnt get milk and curd that easily in Marchula. Also the shops are likely to be closed by 8 PM. So plan accordingly
PS - Thanks Chinni, my elder daughter for helping me to put together this blog post!!
