Photo Essay – Nature’s Canvas, Landscape of Kanha National Park

A trip to Kanha is like traveling to a nature lovers’ paradise with beautiful sights and sounds for your senses and your soul – every second of the drive opens up newer and beautiful vistas before you, gorgeous birds fly all around and their music is like peace for some part of your inner being and the animals of Kanha provide valuable lessons that we humans definitely need to learn.

But this post today is dedicated to the landscapes of  Kanha; that surely transports you into an alternate world where nature seems to have unleashed its creative juices and created a magnificent canvas with various elements from nature. And for my post today, I have decided to post a photo essay by combining the beauty of this landscape with some of my favourite quotes. Enjoy.

“There is always music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.”
― Minnie Aumonier

Drive through endless green Sal trees

Photo Essay – Birds of Kanha National Park

Kanha National Park is best known for its tiger population and the tiger sightings. But on my trip I discovered that it’s also a bird watcher’s and a photographers paradise. We had numerous sightings of some beautiful birds (both the common and the not so common) but I was able to capture just a few through the lens of my camera. And sharing the ones caught with you below –

Shikra Bird – These are hunting birds that prey on other birds. The males have a red iris while the females have a yellow iris and they can hunt birds as large as themselves.

Shikra Bird, Male with a red iris

Up in the Air with Red Ants and their woven leaf nests

Ants live in cracks (in cavities of anything – walls, plants, etc), Ants live in hills (ant hills),

But ever heard of ants living in a nest in trees?

Tree / Weaver Ants, Kanha National Park

 

I had not, but met with these tree / weaver ants in our resort, The Baagh in Kanha. We were out for a walk when we saw these large funny balls of leaves hanging on trees with numerous red colored ants all over it. Our guide then introduced us to these remarkable creatures that live in large colonies in leaf nests hanging on trees and display a unique nest-building behaviour – where worker ants construct nests by sewing leaves together using larval silk.

5 reasons to go on a Tiger safari, not to see the Tiger only!

Recently when I went to the Kanha National Park, the only image that crossed my mind was of the Tiger! This was going to be my first safari experience and according to me then, a successful jungle safari meant a good tiger sighting and that’s all. But one actual safari experience, and I was proven wrong beyond doubt. While a tiger sighting is one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring sights, there are numerous other sights in the Kanha jungle that are equally breathtaking, if not more.  

Kanha National Park, Madhya Pradesh

And I wanted to share my top 5 reasons for visiting the Kanha tiger safari, and not just for the tiger sighting: 

Meeting Tigers in Kanha National Park

“There is just something about seeing a tiger in the wild”. I had read and heard countless versions of this statement from many people and never paid much heed to it. Guess, I thought whats the big deal but little did I know that one trip to Kanha and I would join this bandwagon. Well let me rewind and restart. Earlier this year when I was setting my travel goals for 2014, I decided to include a jungle safari and hopefully catching a sight of the tiger to my list. And a chance call from Amit of The Detour Co, and I decided to join 14 other Tiger “aspirants” to figure what all the hoopla was about.

My first sight of the tiger in Kanha