April… wait what? One month already, that happened faster than expected.
Jim Corbett National Park is one of the oldest national parks in India, with a size of 1318 km2 (a little more than half the size of Luxembourg). It is home to many animals in their natural habitat, as for example elephants, different snakes and the elusive tiger.
How to get to Jim Corbett national park from Rishikesh
First you have to get from Rishikesh to Haridwar, the easiest and fastest solution being to share one of the bigger Tuk-Tuks that circle around in this area (I have not seen them anywhere else in India but they are common here). These fit 8 people and you can either wait for it to fill up or tell the driver to go immediately and pay the full cost (which was about 600 INR, a fair price concidering it is a one hour drive from Tapovan).
In Haridwar is a big bus stand with buses going in every possible direction. It took me a bit of asking around, I think I was pointed 5 times in different directions, but eventually I did find the bus going to Ramnagar. Ramnagar is the town closest to the national park and this is where you’ll want to look for a place to stay. The bus ride from Haridwar to Ramnagar took the usual ca. 5 hours.
Ramnagar
Ramnagar itself has very little to offer. You are here for the national park and that’s it. Plan your stay accordingly and don’t overstay. I stayed in probably the best place I have been to so far, check it out if you plan visiting the park: Corbett Nature Retreat – it is about half an hour outside of Ramnagar, more into the forest area and really calm. The hosts are the most lovely people, their homemade food is amazing and the calm of the place just invites you to chillax after you’ve been to the park. But if homestays are not your thing, there are also a lot of high rated resorts in the area.
How to book a safari into the park
Only official safari jeeps are allowed to enter the park and booking one at a reasonable price proved to be more difficult than I thougt. I tried to investigate the matter and make a booking before I arrived but I eventually gave up. I read a couple of times that the cost for one jeep would be 12000 INR (about 130 €) which is of course more on the expensive side, especially if you have to pay it alone. I tried to make an online booking, but aborted halfway through. Shortly after, the booking office called me because they saw my unfinished booking and wanted me to finalise it. They told me that it would even be 16000 INR for a single person! Itold them I’d keep it on hold for now.
When I arrived in Ramnagar I went directly to the office, asking if there were any groups scheduled for the next day that I could join and share the cost. They simply told me “No sharing, not possible, make an online booking”… wow… nothing to do here. Makes sense that they don’t support that, it is more lucrative for them if they send more jeeps in the jungle rather than filling the exisiting ones. Sad mentality. Back to square one for me.
Running out of options to save money on this I decided to catch a Tuk-Tuk to bring me to my nature retreat and during that drive I was slowly resigning and coming to terms that this safari would probably become quite an expensive pleasure.
After half an hour of a bumby ride on a forest path I arrived at the nature retreat. As soon as I got of the Tuk-Tuk I noticed a young lady, obviously also a foreigner, walking towards me. She promptly adressed me “Hello, excuse me but would you maybe want to share….” “YES”. That was the actual dialogue.
So that solved the problem. As it turned out this young lady, a tourist from poland, stayed in the same place as me and was facing the same issue. Our host helpfully arranged the trip for us and in the end it turned out that the Jeep costed only 8000 INR, so 4000 per person in our case!
As for chosing the safari, we had two options: at 6 am in the morning, as soon as the park opens, or at 2 pm in the afternoon. Morning time being the best time to spot animals the choice was quickly made.
Jim Corbett National Park
Now for the safari itself: we got picked up at 5 am since we first had to drive from our homestay back to Ramnagar and from there into the park where we arrived shortly before 6 am. The park is an impressive old forest which feels – apart from the simple roads on which the jeeps drive around – totally untouched. About 250 tigers roam around, but they are very elusive. Our guide tried its best to gain distance from the other jeeps to raise the chances of seeing a tiger (they obviously avoid the noise of the engines). Sadly we didn’t manage to see a feline, but many other animals, the ones that impressed me most were a pyton and a sloth bear (the driver and the guide started exclaming “Bhaaloo” – which as I learned is the hindi word for bear – this explains that) crossing the path and disappearing in the bushes – probably looking after its bare necessities. Despite its name, the sloth bear was to quick to be caught on photo though.
I fully enjoyed this park even if we didn’t manage to see a tiger. The density of animals was however much lower than in Sri Lanka’s Yala national park, which up to day still remains the best national park I’ve been to in my personal opinion. The safari lasted 3 hours, from 6 am – 9 am, and at 10 am we were back at the retreat where a tasty breakfast was already waiting for us. The rest of the day was used for relaxing and working on this homepage. The next day I would continue to Nainital.
Click on one of the pictures below to see the Jim Corbett park gallery:
