Betla National Park

Meet mine and Fred's ride in Betla National Park, a dream come true finally experiencing a ride on an elephant, this was the highlight of the trip. After a gruelling 5 hours in a very small car with A/C that was barely working in 43 degrees we arrived at the hotel. Got to say slightly run down government run establishment, obviously lack of tourism from the worry that 9 out of 10 villagers are Naxalites has done damage to the place as little money is spent on maintaining the place. With paint peeling off the walls and no other residents but us they decide that when the power goes off its not worth running the generator for only two guests. An hour later melting into my bed i have it out with the reception staff and he tells me its the managers decision and hes currently on lunch at 3.30pm. Got to say didn't buy this rubbish and had a hissy fit requesting to leave if it was not put on immediately. Also had a friend who put out a request to the chief of police in the area to make sure we were OK and comfortable and he sent a assistant to look after our needs. The power was switched on pretty quickly after that. Though throughout the night we had several power cuts and had very little sleep with lack of A/C and fan at times.

Samba

Started our tour in a Jeep around the park with our driver, the ranger, the Jeep driver, our personal assistant and another man in the back not sure what he was about. But we did get to see a few animals in the very short hour ride they gave us.

Blurry peacock

Bambi

Elephants in the wild at sunset

Think one of the difficulties in the park at this time of year is the many forest fires, seemed to be just the actual heat causing so much damage. I was also told that the park suffers from poaching as well and only has 2 tigers both male left and a hand full of leopards none of which we spotted. Although we were told these were tiger foot prints circled and that they lived in this rocky palace.

Rocky Palace

Our Final day on-board the elephant we got to go in the thicket of the forest, not that we saw anything more because of it although it was a great experience and had to hold on tight going down hill and through the water.