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Kanha Tiger Reserve

Kanha lies mid-way between the national parks of Bandhavgarh and Pench, around 150km south east of the city of Jabalpur and 250km north east of Nagpur, where you can find the nearest airport. This national park, together with surrounding reserves and buffer zones, forms the Kanha Tiger Reserve, which at some 2,000km2 in size is the largest reserve in the state of Madhya Pradesh and a very important part of India’s “Project Tiger”. The magnificent scenery of the park includes areas of hilly terrain covered in a mosaic of beautiful forests, open grasslands, rivers, streams, wetlands, and small lakes.

In addition to the Bengal Tiger, a good population of which lives in this large district, a number of other large species of predator are often seen in this park. Leopards are seen more frequently here than in most other places in India, as are sloth bear, jungle cats, jackets and dhole (Asian wild dog). Langur monkeys, sambar deer, axis deer and wild boar are all very common, while the otherwise rare swamp deer is often seen in the central region of the park.

The gaur ox, which can be up to two meters tall, thrives in the park and the population here is now so large that it has contributed to the reintroduction of this species, the world’s biggest wild oxen, to a number of other national parks. Gaur ox are also known as Indian bison, and are considered by some to be the fifth member of India’s “Big Five” instead of the water buffalo.

More than 300 species of birds have been recorded in the park, and the birds here are both impressive and colourful including: parakeets, bee-eaters, rollers, peafowl and the ancestor of the domestic chicken, the jungle fowl. Kanha also shares the honour with Pench of having been the world famous, Nobel prize winning author and poet Rudyard Kipling’s home region, and providing the inspiration for “The Jungle Book”, which has been immortalised on film on a number of occasions.

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