This summer unravel the deep mysterious secrets of the forests and feel the wilderness and its charm. Located in the heart of India, Pench Tiger Reserve is one of the prime destinations of tiger tourism.
Pench Tiger Reserve and its neighbourhood is the original setting of Rudyard Kipling's most famous work, The Jungle Book.
Project tiger
Tucked away in the southern reaches of the Satpura hill ranges, the Reserve is named after the Pench, which flows through Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. In 1999, Pench became the 19th Project Tiger Reserve with 292 sq. km area of the Pench National Park.
The forest and the friends of the wild come alive during the peak summer months. As you enter, the smell of the dense forest and the piercing silence through the woods makes your heart skip a beat.
Here, if you are not alert enough, a million secrets of the forest may slip past you within a blink of an eye. Once inside the forest, your ears and eyes must be totally surrendered to catch every beat and action.
The silence too has some secrets; the call of the deer, sambar and monkey is an indication of the movements of the big cat, the royal Bengal tiger.
The undulating topography of Pench Tiger Reserve supports a mix of tropical, moist, deciduous forest and dry deciduous teak, along with other species of shrubs, trees and climbers.
Moyan, mahua, mokha, skiras, tendu and khair are also found. Bamboo is restricted to some valleys. The area has a number of seasonal streams where a variety of birds and animals visit to quench their thirst.
As the prey concentration is high along the Pench river, tigers usually inhabit this belt. Leopards, though, generally operate in the peripheral areas but are occasionally seen in deep forests. Jungle cats are commonly seen. Small Indian civets and palm civets are common.
Jackals, packs of wild dogs or dhols , herds of gaur, langur and rhesus monkeys can be spotted too.
There are more than 200 species of birds, including several migratory ones, which inhabit the park. Commonly seen birds include peafowl, red jungle fowl, crow pheasant, crimson breasted barbet, racket tailed drongo, whistling teal, orioles, wagtails, mynah, waterfowl and blue kingfisher.
The easiest way to travel to Pench is by road from Nagpur. It is a three hours drive from Nagpur (88 kms).
