Road Trip to a Tiger Reserve in India

There is nothing comparable to a road trip on a motorbike with friends while setting the destination to a forest.

In April 2012 I along with my friends suddenly planned for a road trip to Simlipal. Its a Tiger Reserve Forest situated in the Indian state of Odhisa.

The forests in India remain close to public in the month of April, moreover the scorching heat in the atmosphere doesn't support to have proper fun. But a group of crazy people like us always keep these factors aside while a plan for a road trip is made.

We were a team of 4 people:

                                                         

                               Atish                Rishi (Me)                Sauma                   Soumya

The night before the trip Sauma and Soumya both stayed in my home and we planned to start early morning before the sunrise and meet Atish near his home which is more than 100 Kilometers away from us but is situated on the route to our destination.

The Journey Begins

We started as per our plan but even before we could reach Atish we felt hungry and stopped near a food junction to have some snacks.

Then the journey started again and we met Atish to head towards our destination.

We were not far from our destination when we stopped again to have our lunch.

Upon asking the restaurant manager regarding the concerned person who can issue our permit to enter the core area of the forest he told us to visit the Forest Department Office which was just a few yards from the restaurant.

The officer there advised us to meet the Forest Ranger directly next day morning as He is the only person who can issue a permit when the forest remains closed for common public. He even advised us to stay somewhere nearby for that night instead of heading towards the forest as there are no hotels.

Next day, after having our breakfast we started our journey and our first goal was to meet the Forest Ranger for the issuance of the permit to the core area of the forest. Upon meeting him he told us that he can't allow us to the core area, but he can issue a permit upto the place from where the core area starts.

Even that was a great deal for an unplanned trip.

A few photos of the places we went to:

Spotted this creature near the waterfall 

Videos from the trip that shows the fun we had (sorry for the usage of certain slang in native language)

video taken while we were on our way to meet the forest ranger. Dash Cams were not known to us that time so had to use a handheld digital camera. 

Video taken after entering the forest and we stopped near a waterfall (a water stream would be a better term to use though) finally

And we went down 

Atish fell into the water while he was insisting me to jump. Listen to Sauma behind the camera laughing at the incident 😝