Quick Facts
- Where: Pench National Park, spread across Maharashtra & Madhya Pradesh (Turia Gate area)
- When we went: 13–16 October 2017 (long weekend ahead of Diwali)
- Ideal duration: 3 nights / 3 safaris minimum
- Getting there: Nagpur, ~100km / 2-3 hrs by road
- Best for: Families and friend groups; readers wanting to understand gate/lodge coordination
- Budget level: Mid-range to ultra-luxury (Mahua Vann to Baghvan by Taj Safaris)
It had been three years since Kanha, and the itch for another jungle weekend had well and truly set in. But this time, the calendar wasn’t on our side. School holidays across the group’s four families only began on Saturday, 14th October, and with Dhanteras falling on the 17th, everyone wanted to be home well before then, which meant flying back out by the 16th. That left us a genuinely short window: three days, two nights, no room for a long haul.
That single constraint ruled out Kanha and Bandhavgarh before we’d even properly discussed them: both are the better part of half a day’s travel from Nagpur, simply too far for a window this tight. We set ourselves a rule: nothing more than two hours from Nagpur. Pench fit perfectly, and so the “Quest for the Tiger” continued, a little closer to home this time.
Getting There
We took the overnight train again, from CSMT, Mumbai, departing the evening of Friday, 13th October 2017, reaching Nagpur the next morning, Saturday the 14th. As with Kanha, this was a deliberate choice: giving the kids a proper train journey rather than defaulting to a quick flight, something that’s becoming rarer as flights get cheaper and schedules get busier.
From Nagpur, it’s a short ~100km, 2–3 hour drive to Pench; roads were in decent shape this time, though as always, it’s worth checking current road conditions before finalising plans. If the roads are ever in poor shape, Tadoba National Park is a solid nearby alternative.
A late addition to the group: Anurag and Arushi weren’t meant to be on this trip at all; they’d come to CSMT only to drop off their older daughter Kanushi, since their second, 8-month-old Aavishi, was too young for them to comfortably leave behind. Somewhere on the platform, between goodbyes, we talked them into joining anyway. On the spot. With absolutely nothing packed: not a change of clothes, not a single diaper, nothing for the baby or themselves.
The moment the train pulled out, we called ahead to a young couple on my staff at the Nagpur office, who’d been married only a few months. They spent that night doing an emergency shopping run through the city’s malls, working entirely off photos and sizes we texted them, piecing together clothes, diapers, and every basic toiletry a family of four would need from scratch. They were waiting for us with everything packed and ready when we reached the lodge the next morning. It’s the kind of last-minute rescue that only really happens in India, and it’s stayed one of our favourite stories from the whole trip.
Safari Permits and the Two-State Puzzle
Pench comes with a planning quirk that catches a lot of first-time visitors off guard: the park is spread across two states (Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh), and despite being one contiguous forest, each side operates as an entirely separate park for permit bookings and stays. Rules differ between the two, and which side offers better sightings can shift from year to year, so it’s worth checking current conditions rather than assuming one side is always better.
As with all Indian national parks, permits open online 60 to 120 days in advance, with a small Tatkal quota for last-minute bookings. By 2017, the rules had tightened somewhat from our Kanha trip three years earlier: all guest names and government IDs had to be submitted at booking, though (as it turned out on this very trip) there was still a little flexibility to add genuine last-minute names in special circumstances.
One important rule change since Kanha: by this point, anyone above the age of six counted as a full adult for jeep occupancy: a shift from Kanha, where our under-six kids didn’t count at all. With older kids this time, that meant needing two jeeps instead of the single gypsy that had comfortably fit everyone in 2014.
Planning tip worth repeating for anyone booking a Pench trip: decide your safari gate first, then book a lodge close to it, not the other way around. A lodge on the wrong side of the park can turn an early safari start into a painful hour-long drive before you’ve even begun. We booked our three safaris from Turia Gate, the most popular of Pench’s entry points.
Another tip, this one on timing: if you’re doing more than one safari, always try to mix morning and evening drives rather than repeating the same slot. The jungle genuinely feels different at each end of the day: mornings are cooler and fresher, evenings bring long light and, if you’re lucky, a proper sunset over the tree line. Both are worth experiencing, sightings or not.
Where to Stay
We stayed at Mahua Vann Lodge: a reasonable choice for the price, but on reflection, a fairly average one. It has the right bones: a forested setting, a decent garden for the kids to run around in, cottages spaced out in their own quiet corner of the property. But the finer details let it down a little: rooms felt rustic with some visible wear and tear, and the pool area wasn’t particularly well kept, with leaves and the odd bug making an evening dip less appealing than it should have been. The lodge also lacked the naturalist-led lounge culture that made Kanha Earth Lodge so memorable: no one to sit with over a drink and swap stories about the day’s sightings.
In hindsight, I’d recommend either of the two properties one tier up: Pench Jungle Camp or Vannraj by Ayana, both also at Turia Gate.
Other options worth knowing about:
- Pench Tree Lodge, Pugdundee Safaris, near Karmajhari Gate
- Jamtara Wilderness Camp: high-end, rustic-luxury, but sits at a different gate entirely (Jamtara), so only worth considering if your permits are booked from there
- Baghvan, A Taj Safari: the standout luxury option at Turia Gate; 12 colonial-style bungalows on a dry riverbed, considered the gold standard among Indian safari lodges
Day 1: Arrival and First Safari
We reached the lodge on the morning of the 14th, where our staff couple was waiting with everything they’d bought overnight for Anurag and Arushi. Lunch at the lodge was standard Indian fare: nothing that stood out, but nothing to complain about either, which is about as much as you can hope for from a jungle lodge buffet.
The first safari, that evening, was fairly uneventful in terms of sightings, just the usual cast of elephants, deer, birds, owls and monkeys, but no great drama. What it did give us was one of the loveliest sunsets we’ve seen over a jungle, with the whole forest lit up in orange for a few minutes, which alone made the evening slot worth it.
It was enough, too, to get a proper first feel for Pench, and the contrast with Kanha was immediate. Where Kanha had felt earthy and deeply green, almost lush, Pench was noticeably denser, with thicker tree cover throughout, broken up by the occasional patch of open grassland, but overall a more closed-in, shadowed kind of jungle.
Day 2: Morning Safari
The second safari, on the morning of the 15th, followed the same pattern as the first, a steady stream of deer, owls, monkeys and other birds, but nothing dramatic. What made it memorable, though, were the tiger pugmarks: several very fresh sets, right along the road our jeep was travelling on. Fresh enough that the tiger had almost certainly walked that exact stretch just before our safari began, a genuine close miss. We stopped a couple of times to look them over properly.
Much of the rest of the drive turned into an exercise in tracking sound rather than sight, following jackal calls and various bird alarm calls through the jungle, trying to triangulate where something might be moving. It made for an engaging drive even without a direct sighting, but we came back empty-handed on the tiger front for the second day running.
Back at the lodge that afternoon, the kids had a great time in the garden, a proper game of football and other running-around games, which the space handled well. It was a nice, easy counterbalance to the early start.
Day 3: Final Safari and the Wild Dogs
Our last safari, on the morning of the 16th, started at the usual early hour (6 AM), ahead of our flight back to Nagpur that evening. The first couple of hours were quiet, and by the time the packed breakfast was done, a certain sleepy stillness had settled over the jeep. The only real sighting through the morning was a pair of hyenas at a distance, different from anything we’d spotted on the previous two safaris, but hardly dramatic.
Then, on the way back toward the exit gate, everything changed. We came across a pack of wild dogs (four or five of them), a genuinely rare sighting in the Indian jungle, and one we hadn’t encountered on any of our previous safaris across two trips. They ran alongside our jeep for a stretch, occasionally turning to face us directly, giving us clean, close angles that most wildlife encounters simply don’t offer. It was a proper adrenaline moment to end the trip on, and easily the best sighting of the whole three days.
We checked out shortly after, drove back to Nagpur, and took our evening flights home.
Pench vs Kanha: How It Compared
Pench felt denser and less open than Kanha, without the same “fresh earth” atmosphere or the long sightlines that made Kanha’s landscape so striking. Once again, no tiger, though pug marks were plentiful, and the one safari the group skipped apparently had a sighting, which stings a little in hindsight.
Overall, we didn’t warm to Pench’s jungle quite as much as Kanha’s; it lacked that same green, earthy character, and the disappointment stung a touch more this time, six safaris in across two trips with still no tiger sighting between us.
More Than the Sightings
But we came home with good memories regardless, and a clear resolve to keep going until the sightings finally came. If anything, this trip’s real highlight had nothing to do with wildlife at all; it was the first time all four kids had taken a holiday together, with Aarhaan now part of the group alongside Anushka, Krishang and Kanushi. These are the trips where children build the kind of bonds that last well beyond childhood, and that mattered more, in the end, than any tiger would have.
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