What Ails Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve?

[Dipankar Mazumdar]

Yes, ranthambhore has a large share of the 1/2 a day visitor to the park enroute to other places in rajasthan.The Forest department officials are completely immersed in in giving guided tours to VIP/ Relatives.In my recent trip there in Zone-4, a group of 7 Gypseys converged around Machli feeding on a Chital carcass in a location that was off road and hence should be strictly out of bounds to the visitor. there was a pair of DMs, A police car with relatives of the SP, jeeps with Relatives of the forest officials in full view of our jeeps stranded on the track. Due to the obvious popularity of zone 4, due to the very visitor friendly machli and the very visible Berda Cubs, there is a huge demand for allocation of this route and touts and agents have a field day in assuring visitors a conformed zone-4 and hence hefty commissions.
To be fair to the FD, the online safari booking system, coupled with the preferance to the visitor over the tout at the booking window is an obvious plus point in ensuring more equitable wildlife viewing in the park.
BTW..i dont think the canter is such a bad idea, agreed that it is a noisy cankerous device, but each canter ferries 30 people which when compared to jeeps which technically should ferry 6 people but because of the Rs 400/- per seat charge, often i see, a single or two people on the jeep instead of six. So that makes for a very large footprint when compared to a 30 people canter (which is always full). Only 4 jeeps are allowed per route (meaning 24 people at the max...usually its 15 people), and 3 canters (meaning 90 people). I suppose some channel for the "aam junta" has to be left in the scheme of things.