Day 7 - 8 hour drive and 4 discovery stops along the way

Making bricks for house repair.  

Day 7 Feb 27 Wednesday - 8 hour drive from park to park - Kanha to Bandevgarh.

We say goodbye to the wonderful staff at our first nature reserve and drive to another lodge owned by the same family.  In 1973 Tarun's grandfather was appointed by Indira Gandhi to head the very first Tiger Task Force in India.   He started the tourist lodges that the family members now own and operate.  The one here in Kanha Park has about 20 'cabins' and a very open common area.  They close during the rainy season.  Tarun's cousin, Amit Sankra, heads the family enterprise from the Bandevgarh Lodge and they are opening another lodge in Penna area. Tarun and Dimple's eight year-old, Jai, takes his first trip without his parents as he travels with us to visit with his Uncle Amit for a few days at the lodge.  He'll travel back with the tour group making the reverse trip.

So the highlight of our Kanha experience must surely be the family of FIVE tigers, the single male sighting and a rare leopard sighting (only the second one our guide has seen this year. Very lucky.)  We'll forget our brush with food poisoning soon… we're both feeling fine now.

This wild ride to the next animal reserve will take about 8 hours with the same death defying driving and along roads that sometimes disappeared. We make a variety of stops along the way at:  a sugar farm, a temple along the river Narmda, a 'rest stop' for picnic lunch packed for us at Kanha, a brick making enterprise in the front yard of the house under repair, and a market.

We arrive at the lodge just before dinner and settle into our great little cabins. After dinner we gather with other guests for a video of elephants with trunk cameras which can get close enough to the tigers to get unprecedented scenes of tiger life.

Hanna - English student who grew up in Germany will begin Asian studies in college in London in May.  Friend of family who has helped with German guests and teaches Jai math.  

School bus?

Begin walk from road to sugar farm.  About three acres with variety of crops - chick peas, lentils, sugar cane....
That's Vijay, Jai, Janet and Dan

Round and round to squeeze the cane and get juice.

boil the cane juice to get molasses

Then they strain the molasses for a solid they take to market

Next stop after the farm:  A temple next to the river

The river has holy water like the Ganges so they bathe in it and take bottles of it home to mix a bit with their home drinking water

Lunch on the way

Dan taking pictures

Three generations making bricks to fix an ailing wall.

Mom owns the home

Son lives at home

Daughter-in-law lives with husband's family

Last stop is the market.  Here are local cigarettes - cost about  $.30 for a pack

Vijay explaining the various products available

playing cards at the market

do you recognize the barber?

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