guest Testimonials & tour reviews

In Feb 23 we finally set forth for our Indian Tiger Safari adventures, 7 years in the planning and delayed for 3 years by Covid. We combined our safaris with Indian sights, including some that focussed on family history in Indore, Delhi, Shimla, visited major Indian sights – Delhi, Shimla, Jaipur, Indore, Maheshwar, all put together beautifully by Sharad Vats. We got our feel for yesteryear and the British Raj when we stayed in an old palace in Shimla, The Woodville Palace Hotel, in a Haveli (an old mansion house) in Jaipur, and in a former palace with a current prince in residence at Ahilya Fort. We also stayed in regular hotels, generally 4 star. We visited many historical monuments and sights, visited the Taj Mahal (with amazing guide called Khizar who is both very knowledgeable about the Taj and Agra Fort and also a wizz on iPhone photography including “trick” photography. For these locations, he knows all the tricks and places and poses for “professional” pictures of you all with your mobile phone camera. You hardly need to take photos yourself), we walked through markets, made woodblock prints in Jaipur, hiked a mountain in Shimla and at loads of nice food.

Our tiger safaris were the absolute highlight of our trip and we visited three National Parks – Jim Corbett National Park (5 safaris) , Bandhavgarh National Park (7 safaris) and Kanha National Park (5 safaris). An original itinerary for 2020 had us doing shared jeep safaris, and on Sharad’s advice, we changed and undertook all safaris on an exclusive basis, which was so much better. Each park gave us several fantastic tiger sightings including “our own tiger” on several occasions and these “own tiger” sightings were aided by the incredible skills and knowledge of our drivers and guides – Vijay and Pervej in Corbett, Ajeet in Bandhavgarh, and Mahish in Kanha. They know the names of all the birds and animals, and they know just where to look for the tigers, and pointed them out when we couldn’t see them!

The national parks are spectacular, with awesome sunrises and sunsets and you are removed from the hustle and bustle and crowds and traffic of daily Indian life, to experience space, animals and birds and the natural environment in a peaceful way. Each park was different in its own way, and we saw all of the common animals – tigers, many types of deer, sloth bears including with babies, jackals and pups, wild dogs, elephants, many many birds including peacocks galore. I think the only animal we didn’t see was a leopard.

The planning for this trip began prior to Nature Safari’s visibility on Trip Advisor, and resulted from a pot luck internet search which sounded interesting. Sharad replied very quickly to my first email and it all began from there – Sharad was happy to accommodate anything we wanted to do, rearrange the itinerary and so on, and was always quick to answer emails, answer questions and provide information. When we finally arrived, we were met at the airport by Deepkul and a driver, and had drivers and guides with us the whole time we were in India, making everything hassle free and all the arrangements seamless. Deepkul maintained contact with us via Whats App and phone, providing driver and guide details to us for our new locations. All drivers were professional and safe drivers in the midst of what we saw as mayhem on the roads, helpful, and the cars air conditioned and immaculate with “supplies” of snacks, water and soft drinks, and Wifi!! They stopped when required, took us to nice clean roadside restaurants with generally clean bathroom facilities and western toilets. Some of the drives were incredibly long, but this really helped us cope with them.

If I had to say our favourite place – I would say Corbett and Dhikala lodge, it was where we saw our first tiger, and the location of the lodge within the National Park is great, and it is very beautiful overlooking the river. Its a very rustic lodge, vegetarian only, and sometimes the power goes out (take a torch), but we loved it none the less.