Pench National Park Visit December 2019
This was a school trip in which we experienced the wildness of wildlife.
Fun, laughter, anger, sacredness was all part of this wildlife journey.
Day 1:
It started on 22nd Dec 2019. It was around 4:00 am in the morning when we reached the airport, the excitement was flowing in me as I was thrilled to fly in an airplane 1st time without my parents and with friends and teachers. After all the airport procedures the flight took off and we witnessed a magnificent sunrise through the windows of the aircraft up in the sky in between the clouds. Once we landed in Nagpur after a journey of 1 and 1/2 hours, we boarded an AC Bus and headed to Pench National park. We traveled through many highways and finally arrived at our resort “Mahua Vann”. We went to our allotted rooms and freshened up. We spent time in chit chat till 12:30 PM and had then had sumptuous lunch at the resort restaurant. Once we completed lunch, we went around exploring the resort. The resort was filled with greenery with plants and trees everywhere. It had a lot of different kinds of beautiful flowers. We had time to rest from 2:00 pm to 5 pm in our respective rooms. We had a fun time in the room cracking jokes and made new friends. We were served Hi-Tea on the central lawn of the resort with some biscuits and fried snacks. By 6:00 pm we were asked to assemble in the conference room facility in the resort and there was a session on mammals and birds which went on till 8:30 pm. Later we had fun at the campfire in the resort and had dinner and slept.
Day 2:
- It was around 4:30 am. We received a wake-up call. With that, we all woke up got ready and sat in a gypsy for a jungle safari. I was feeling very cold and covered myself with a lot of warm clothes. We then started our journey got the security clearance and went inside the forest. There were many calls by animals like Human Langoors. Our guide told us that the call was for the tigers to save themselves and save the spotted deer from tigers. We followed the call and waited at the spot for about 15 minutes and eagerly waited to spot the tigers. A gypsy in front of us told that the tiger was spotted a few kilometers from the spot and we drove to the spot as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we couldn’t spot the tiger. We then headed to the breakfast point in the jungle. During this journey, we spotted deer, Indian Gaurs, Chausingha and Antlers. After having breakfast we heard more calls but we could not spot the tigers The forest was lush green and cool breeze put us to sleep. By 11:00 we were back to the resort and we had time till 12:30 to finish our daily chores and some chit chat in the rooms. We had lunch between 12:30 to 1:30 playing the games like atlas and word building and had a lot of fun. We set up camera traps in the resort near the swimming pool to observe how camera traps work. We started to walk towards a nearby village to talk to the villagers about the challenges that they face in their daily life staying close to the forest. This part was much fun as we had some language barrier as we could not communicate properly in Hindi, however, our Hindi Teacher Sheela Mam helped us convey our thoughts to villagers and was successful in understanding it. We understood that the villagers lacked education, but they lived in peace. We also understood that they did not face challenges living next to the forest. We walked back to the resort while we enjoyed viewing the sunset. At the resort, we had Hi-Tea and we were given a session on reptiles. We had a campfire and enjoyed a movie at Pench National park. We had dinner and then It was time to talk to our parents over the phone and we slept. It was a very long day and I enjoyed it greatly.
Day 3:
We were given a wake-up call at 6:30 in the morning. We went out on a Nature walk in which we acquired so much knowledge on the plants and birds in that area. The sunrise during this walk was magnification but the dewdrops on the plants and grass made our shoes wet. On this walk, we also spotted Hunuma Langoors and learned about Asoka trees, cotton plantations and many other types of birds. We returned to the resort, had delicious hot breakfast and set out for an activity called “Quadrant Activity”. This activity involved finding insects, birds plants outside the resort in the huge fields, that we had learned during our sessions in the resort. This activity was fun-filled as we had to throw stones at the trees to shoo the birds away and watch which bird it was. We returned to the resort, had a nice swim at the pool and later got freshened up and went ahead for lunch. We had a filling lunch and headed to “Padchar Village” to have an experience of making pottery by ourselves with the help of a guide. We were allowed to buy a few of the pottery items from the sale. I thoroughly enjoyed this experience. We got free time till 8:30 then we had dinner. After that there was a tribal dance, we all joined and danced with them and then we slept.
Day 4:
We got a wake-up call for jungle safari, we got ready and started off. Today we did not spot many animals and again we could not spot a tiger. Once we came back to the resort we took bath and vacated the room. We then had lunch and were quizzed on everything we learned during the trip. Then we started for Nagpur airport. once we arrived we completed the airport procedures and boarded the flight we then landed collected our baggage and got reunited with our parents.
That was the end of the wild adventure.
by Pradyoth Kashyap
Grade 6, Ekya School, JP Nagar
