India's Satpura National Park: A Naturetrek Wildlife Festival

Our regular ‘Wildlife Festivals’ (one-off departures, where we take exclusive use of a hotel in a special location and invite a larger group of clients and leaders than usual) have proved extremely popular over the years. For our next one, in February 2025, we are delighted to have secured exclusive use of one of our favourite wildlife lodges in India, Reni Pani Jungle Lodge. From this luxurious base, situated in peaceful buffer zone forest, we will explore Satpura National Park — the most scenic and tranquil of central India’s Tiger Reserves (and our favourite!) — and enjoy its fabulous variety of birds and mammals.

This special holiday will follow a similar format to our highly successful previous Wildlife Festivals in the French Pyrenees (2022 & 2016), India’s Satpura National Park (2019), Italian Dolomites (2018), Antarctica (2016), Ecuador (2013), Nepal (2011) and Spitsbergen (2006). Central to the success of all these gatherings have been the same key components: the camaraderie of a group of like-minded enthusiasts; specially chosen accommodation which is friendly and welcoming; outstanding wildlife and a mouth-watering and varied programme of wildlife excursions laid on each day, each led by an expert Naturetrek leader or local naturalist guide (or both), from which you can choose, to suit your particular tastes and interests, on a daily basis. Good food, a well-stocked bar, and an exchange of wildlife stories will complete each day’s activities — the friendships forged as memorable as the wildlife seen. It is hardly surprising that the Naturetrek Wildlife Festival format has proved a popular one.

The tour includes six nights in Reni Pani Jungle Lodge, situated just outside Satpura National Park. We will take exclusive occupancy of the lodge’s 12 twin-bedded cottages and four deluxe 'tented rooms', and every day our party of 30-strong will be able to choose from a wide variety of morning and afternoon/evening excursions — each one expertly guided by naturalists from both our complement of expert Naturetrek leaders present as well as from Reni Pani’s superb team of naturalist guides. Amongst them will be our friend, Aly Rashid, a passionate naturalist and conservationist from the local royal family who both built, and owns, Reni Pani and has had a lifelong association with Satpura.

Excursions will include jeep safaris into the national park, walking safaris inside the park, boat trips on the waterways at its edge, local village visits and night-time spotlighting safaris. We will also take wildlife walks and safaris amongst the 30 acres of forest, meadows, ravines and waterholes that comprise the lodge’s grounds, as well as in the wider forest expanses of the surrounding buffer zone. There will also be time to relax, to cool off in Reni Pani’s delightful swimming pool, and enjoy al fresco dining beneath the stars and in the flickering oil lamps of the terrace.

We have chosen India on this occasion because in no other country do we have more experience. It was in India that our co-founder and Chairman, David Mills, spent many years prior to founding Naturetrek. Not surprisingly, it then became the very first destination to which we operated a Naturetrek wildlife holiday back in 1987 (read more here!). From that time on, we have sent more wildlife groups to India than almost any other country and we have run multiple tours there in every one of our 38 years since, more than any other wildlife tour operator. Finally, it was in India — in Kashmir, to be precise — that Rajan Jolly, our much-loved Naturetrek India specialist, was born, educated and first cut his teeth in the travel industry prior to spending his last 24 years with Naturetrek.

So, why Satpura? Well, it’s our favourite central Indian National Park and Tiger Reserve. Yet, surprisingly, Tigers are difficult to see here... and that’s why we love it! This fact means that, for starters, Satpura is not inundated with noisy Tiger-tourists. Far from it, just 12 jeeps are permitted to enter the park at a time. And while Satpura’s Tigers are not habituated as they are in other parks, and therefore difficult to see (though we have been successful in the past), Satpura does offer a rich variety of other mammals. Nowhere else are Gaur (Asian Bison), Sloth Bear and the elusive Asian Wild Dog as easily seen. These species, together with Indian Giant Squirrel and Leopard (which is relatively common here) make up Satpura’s ‘big five’. Additionally, Sambar, Chital, Nilgai, Blackbuck, Wild Boar, Rhesus Macaque, Common Langur and Marsh Mugger Crocodile may also be seen, and perhaps even the elusive Chousingha and nocturnal Rusty-spotted Cat. The park’s fine forests and wetlands also hold a diverse and colourful birdlife — Indian Skimmer, Bar-headed Goose, Grey Junglefowl, Red and Painted Spurfowl and a wealth of raptors, hornbills, babblers and bee-eaters being amongst the highlights.

Satpura is also central India’s most scenic national park, with a fabulous landscape of hills, forests, rocky outcrops, gorges, wide waterways and little streams. Concealed within it lie the ruins of ancient temples and Stone Age rock paintings — tantalising testimony to the thousands of years of human occupation of these jungles. Best of all, and unlike any other Tiger Reserve in India, are the multiple ways in which we are able to explore Satpura. Thus, each day, we will be offering you a choice of walks, jeep safaris, boat trips, village visits and night-time spotlighting drives. So, we do hope that, in February 2025, you will join us for this special 10-day Naturetrek Wildlife Festival.

Finally, if you would like to extend your holiday, we are offering a wealth of options — amongst them a 5-day pre-tour extension to Ladakh in search of Snow Leopard, and a 4-day post-tour extension to Bori Wildlife Sanctuary, where Tiger sightings are increasing and more obliging than in tranquil Satpura. A combination of two parks really will offer the best of India’s wildlife!