India: Tiger Safaris

Heathrow to Delhi. The BA flight is 4 hours delayed. All we missed was the complimentary hotel layover in Delhi. Air India flight to Jabulpur and a driver to take us to the Jackson Hotel.
Panic to discover I've left my new phone on the plane. Blame jet lag and no sleep. A few phone calls by the front desk and it's located. Our first of many Indian buffet dinners and the food is just amazing.
Our 6 night, 7 day tour to a couple of Tiger Parks in Madhah Pradesh was organised by Tour My India. Our contact, Nitin planned and booked everything with so little fuss on our part, it's unbelievable.
And it's really not expensive to travel in India. Affordable luxury is the key to enjoying India. It's good to escape to your airconditioned car or hotel haven when the heat, the squalor,  the noise and the chaos gets too much.

Having a car and driver in India is a must. Roads are chaotic, drivers are erratic and there's only one rule - hoot and go!

As a passenger, watching life as you pass by is so fascinating.
Your driver also knows where there are decent toilets and good lunch restaurants.

After retrieving my phone at the airport, we drove about 4 hours to Kahna National Park. The park is beautiful and this is the place that inspired Rugyard Kipling's Junglebook. 

All the lodges are outside the park and we stayed at Chitvan Jungle Lodge.

We had a private jeep and 2 guides for each game drive. The hotel provided packed breakfasts and we really enjoyed the birds and had great sightings of tiger, wild dog, jungle cat and  jackal.

We transferred to Bandavgarh National Park for 3 more nights. We loved Bandav Villas and saw 6 more tiger sightings. This was exceptionally good by any measure and was certainly worth enduring the +40°c heat for. 

Almost all the other tourists were local Indians- not even mad dogs and Englishmen can cope with the pre-monsoon heat- but the tigers and their prey do need to come to the water holes regularly.