Trip to Corbett National Park

One of my close friend came from US after a long time along with his wife and 2 kids. And I remember it that was Sunday evening he came to my house to see me and over a cup of masala tea which I prepared after a long time for him (which he used to miss after leaving the hostel) we were discussing about the India’s best places to go out on short vacations. Suddenly my wife jumped and said “hey darling since Thursday May 1 is our holiday and if we can take Friday off then we have four full days to go and why don’t we plan out for a short trip”. As usual wife old ways of freaking out. Looking to her my friend’s wife also joined my wife’s gang…oh god women’s. And then left with no option we finally decided to go out for a short trip.

Now finding a good place to freak out is real not tough for me as near by to New Delhi there are lot of places where you can go and have good time but now since my friend came to India after a long time and knowing that he is pretty adventurous kind of person, I planned for a adventurous trip and the place was Corbett National Park which is not very far from Delhi, just 267 kms or in other words just six-seven hours drive by own car. Luckily everybody accepted and appreciated my decision. One thing I would like to share, if you are planning for such kind of trips then always take your own vehicle or hire from some travel guys. Avoid going in a public transport otherwise you will loose the fun of trip, it will not be a adventurous trip. Since I was also a kind of freak out person so I have kept a SUV with good ground clearance…that’s me. So it was decided to leave Thursday early morning.

Finally the day came, Thursday early morning four’ o clock my door bell rang and that was my friend along with his family and luggage. One day before I and my wife came early from office and packed our luggage too because I don’t like last minute surprises. So finally we dumped the luggage in my SUV and we started for Jim Corbett Park.

For the information sake if you want to go via public transport you can also catch bus or train. Train will drop you at Ramnagar which is 50 kms. away from Corbett park. We reached Jim Corbett park by 12:30 as we stopped between for snacks and nature calls. After reaching there we decided to stay in forest lodge but we couldn’t get as lot of other people living in Delhi or nearby also planned for that trip so all the lodges were booked hence we took a room in a nearby hotel, rooms were in good condition and tariff was also reasonable and it is easy to get that too.

Most people try for living inside the forest, at Dhikala, the main entrance to the park, there is a choice between the ‘luxury’ new forest rest house and annexe, new forest rest house, old forest rest house and individual cabins on very economical prices but all were booked.

After getting refresh we took the safari, in Jim Corbett park safari is twice daily one in afternoon and one early morning. Safari took us inside the jungle but I guess our luck was bad as we were not able to see any tiger or crocodiles. So finally we came back at hotel and enjoyed our drinks and booked one more safari of early morning and praying that next day we will be see tigers.

Next day we all were ready for safari and finally took off and I must say that safari made our day we were able to see man-eaters, crocodiles, dears, elephants. The guide was telling that there are around 585 types of species are in Jim Corbett park and finally in evening we were back to hotel.

The hotel bartender told us that since we are here so try out for fishing if you have a permit from Dhikala Game Garden and he told that the hotel people can arrange too on the price of 700 rupees. And we all agreed to that and asked the reception guys and finally we were having permit in our hand..pretty cheap.

Next day we went to Jim Corbett’s Ramganga river for fishing along with couple of cans of beer and fishing stuff. The full day we were busy catching the fishes, honestly speaking we all really enjoyed that and after catching couple of fishes we were back to hotel and asked the hotel people to add that in our dinner menu and it was ready for our dinner.

Next day morning we checked out from the hotel and started back and in eight hours we were in Delhi at our home enjoying the masala tea and discussing about the trip and the time we enjoyed. That was real fun and had a good time with old friend.