The Jungle Book.....Re-opens...

Jungle jungle baat chali hai pata chala hai...


Arre chaddi pahan ke phool khila hai phool khila hai






Well! These lines will echo in our mind whenever we will read or hear about "Jungle Book". Especially those who lived their best years when an obscure little Mowgli used to enthral us  back in the mid nineties, every Sunday morning on....hold your breath...Delhi Doordarshan.




Now after more than two decades we have the world of Disney present an absolutely stunning portrayal of the "jungle", the enigmatic Bagheera, the adorable Baloo, the mysterious Kaa and the ever evil Sherkhan, not to forget the soulful and gorgeous Mowgli and his band of brothers. Only the Disneyworld can render some commonality between Mahatma Gandhi and Bagheera. Well! Mr Ben Kingsley played the Mahatma and yes....he rendered his vocal chords to Bagheera in the English version.
Barring maybe a few minutes, the redefined Jungle Book definitely took me back into a joy ride into my amazing wonder years. My favourite moments were Baloo's dramatic entry to save Mowgli from Kaa and the last scene where Bagheera, Baloo and Mowgli are lazing around on a branch and the scene transforms into a sketch from "The Jungle Book"




Most importantly it was my son who was ecstatic during and after the movie and I was happy to realize that no matter which era, certain things will universally fascinate children and the jungle with its mystic chants is definitely one of them.

First Road Trip......Into the Wild

I was excited. It was the 23rd Dec and it was going to be my first ever road trip.Apart from the excitement I was thrilled with the thought that I would be seeing the rising sun after God knows how many months. With these thoughts, I fell asleep.
It was a typical winter morning as you associate with Delhi-misty, COLD and the roads were dark and lonely. Although we started around an hour and a half late, it was a blessing in disguise as it was quite foggy in some stretches of the road. After around 30 minutes we finally hit the highway on NH-24 and on our way to Dudhwa National Park.
This wasn't a popular place like the Jim Corbett's, Bandhavgarhs etc but I found it quite enchanting as it seemed to be pretty much a virgin forest from the write-ups on the internet. Dudhwa is around 420 km from Ghaziabad and right at the door step of Nepal as the border is just 25km from the park.
We took the Ghaziabad-Bareilly-Pilibhit-Khutar-Lakhimpur route and it was a great sight to find the roads in such good condition. Barring a 30 km stretch from Pilibhit to Khutar, the drive was so smooth that we didn't take a break for the first 6 Hrs. We crossed Bareilly and took the NH 730 to Khutar. This road wasn't good at all with pot holes all around and at some places construction was also in progress. After an hour on this road we crossed Pilibhit and on the road to Puranpur we pulled over at "Pandit ji ka Dhaba" for lunch.  After some hot rotis and spicy curry, we started the last leg of our journey at exactly 1pm and we had another 150 km to go. The road here was a double road but it was good without much traffic. With lush green farmlands drenched in the afternoon sun on both sides of the road, it was an absolute treat to drive through.
We finally reached Dudhwa National Park at sharp 4PM after a 9.5 hour drive including a one hour lunch break. Dudhwa had just one rest house in the park's vicinity and its quiet and serene look was inviting. We checked into our cottage and found it to be pretty decent for an obscure place like Dudhwa. It had all the modern furnishings and was quite spacious. Food was however a let down and with only one food outlet, it had a monopoly in that place.
The view of the setting sun from the top of a Machan was spectacular and there was an eerie calm that prevailed in the surroundings. With no television and extremely choppy mobile network, we had hardly anything else to do apart from rejuvenating ourselves far from the madding crowd, right at the lap of mother nature.That said, I , my wife (Sarbari) and son (Mrigank) were fast asleep with the excitement of the early morning safari next day.
We woke up at around 5 AM for a 7  O clock jeep safari that would take us to another location inside the jungle from where we would commence our elephant safari.  Mrigank was visibly excited for this and his questions just did not end. I and Sarbari were also looking forward to our first ever elephant ride into the jungle.
The forest authorities had cordoned off a section of the jungle for conserving the one horned rhino and that's where we were supposed to go. We also learnt that the elephants understand a specific language that is common across India except Tamil Nadu. One of the words commonly used by the mahouts is agaet meaning "move front". The ride was quite thrilling as we went through some of the unchartered territories in the jungle. As we waded through the long grass, we spotted a family of wild boars roaming around at a distance. After covering some more distance we saw a rhino and her calf grazing around. We also spotted a couple of stags. Overall the elephant ride was quite adventurous and exciting.
On our way back we again spotted a rhino and loads of deers. While waiting for the elephant ride we took a detour and explored the surrounding areas and spotted different varieties of trees one of which had a triangular base. We also saw "The Crying Tree" as it secretes water continuously and a tree which had the skin like that of a crocodile.
We returned to our cottage at around 10 AM and had our breakfast and got ready for our final tour at 4PM. Around 1 PM, we drove down to the bridge upon the river to check out if we can sight anything. This proved to be a good move as we spotted some crocodiles sun bathing, river turtles, kingfishers and a few more species of birds.
After a fruitful session of wildlife sightings, we were all geared up for our final safari at 4 PM. It was a good one as we spotted varieties of antlers and a herd of wild elephants. It was an endearing sight to see the herd moving around and the younger ones playing amongst themselves. As the sun faded away into the horizon, we made our way back to the rest house, to end what was an eventful trip. Although we did not spot the big cats, it was still a satisfying trip to  one of the most dense forests of India.
There was still some drama to unfold as we started our journey back to Ghaziabad. It was a wrong decision to enter Bareilly for filling up the gas as we lost some crucial time. If that was bad, worse was having a flat tyre a few hours later. We finally sorted out all these issues and had our dinner - spicy chicken curry and hot rotis and finally started the last leg of our journey.
We reached home around 1 AM after a tiring but an exciting and eventful first road trip. All three of us have decided to visit all the national parks with a dash of adventure and our next sojourn is going to be Kanha....