CULTURAL ODYSSEY
Fly-in, guided jeep safari
15 days / 14 nights
- Pristine world of ethnic communities.
- Stay with members of the Royal Family of Kanker.
- Visit Elephanta Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Raipur, capital city of Chattisgarh and the gateway to our tour, sits near the centre of a wide plain. Northwest of Raipur lies the sal-forested Maikal Hills. In these highlands of great forests of hardwood Sal (Shorea robusta) live ethnic communities whose way of life is still quite different from the mainstream. These hills were once part of the land called Godwana, a vast forest area of indigenous communities as kingdoms and Gond clans, many of whose descendants today maintain an animistic, close-to-nature lifestyle. Gondwana itself no longer features as a name on the map of India. When Project Tiger was launched in 1973 to save the tiger, Kanha National Park was one of the nine tiger reserves selected for the Project. It is prime tiger country and is Project Tiger's star success story. Kanha's topography and geology combine in different ways to give it a rich habitat diversity. The topography of the hills comprises a large amphitheatre with meadow like grasslands. The valleys have extensive floors usually centered on some marshy depression, which had once been cultivated fields, but later converted into perennial water tanks. Kanha is home to about 41 species of mammals and about 300 species of birds.
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