A walking safari in Satpura

A walking safari in Satpura

Soon after getting off the boat we walked as fast as we could towards the camp to distance ourselves from the boat. 

About 150 meters into our walk we saw about 30 wild boar feeding in the shallows. Alongside were a herd of sambar, about 10 and 4 Fawns. Leopard pug marks, presumably female, heading in the opposite direction. Lots of bear scat and diggings. 

We head a sambar alarm call once on our right and further down heard another one call from our left. Both calls were because of us for we saw both sambar disappear into the jungle. 

We hit the jeep track that leads to the Soanbadhrah camp and see porcupine tracks from the previous night. We saw Black winged stilts, rudy shield ducks, whistling teals, black headed terns and little terns, all while we were having our breakfast at the camp. On our walk back we decided to head further down the jeep road and take the first dried stream bed as our path back to the trail and are immediately rewarded as we heard sambar and langur calls coming from about seventy meters. 

We waited for the calls to die down a bit and proceeded through the nala which led us to the trail. The sambar calls died down and the langur called a few more time and as we headed towards the location of the calls, a peahen called from near the reservoir.

Two crows and a tree pie came and sat on a tree close to us and we watched as the tree pie dived down to a point in the bushes. We had not yet seen the kill but knew it was behind a dead tree. 

I asked everyone to wait and proceeded down a small nala and up a bank to the dead tree and after searching for about two mins found a perfectly concealed wild boar kill. You could tell it was absolutely fresh as the saliva from the licks of the leopard was still wet and not a single fly was on the carcass!! The area around the kill was flattened and the grass recovering from being pressed down. 

The leopard that was feeding a few minutes ago used the same nala to make its get away as we did to reach the kill. Soon after we started to head towards the jetty and were delighted to see the Evergreen canary flycatcher!! 

Super walk in all!!

Vinod (Park guide from Forsyth’s Lodge, Satpura)