Gates and safari routes

Part of the park situated in the Madhya Pradesh side has 6 entry gates for tourism purpose. In those 3 gates are in core zone and 3 are in buffer zone. The gates in the core zones are Jamtara, Karmajhiri and Turia. The Turia gate falls in the southern side of the park and the other two gate falls in the northern side of the park. Turia is a bigger zone and has more gypsies allowed for tourism purpose. When we go far safari we have to enter and exit only via the same gate for which the permit has been booked. The turia zone has three different routes. The forest officer in-charge at the gate allocates the route to each gypsy. This is being done in an intention to reduce more vehicle movements in the same area. Also to reduce congestion of gypsies in case of any sighting of any big predator is happening. Each and every route has its own beauty in itself.

• One route has grassy patch in the beginning and after couple of kilometres it leads up and down in a rocky patch with lots of Ghost trees. At one point there is a lake adjacent to the road. It is an amazing spot where almost all kinds of animals and birds, big to small, all of them come for water.
• Another route is fully dense patch from the beginning. It climbs up a small slope and wines down in a stretch of rocky patch. This is an ideal spot for the elusive predator, leopard, which is very shy and prefers to stay in such a location. All the other animals are found in this area. Then this part leads to well wooded plains.
• The last route is another interesting route which has lots open patch easily visible for some distance. There are lots of tall trees and well wooded areas and nallah running and crisscrossing. This route also climbs up a small slope and it leads to more of a grassy patch. There are couple of manmade waterholes in some places.

The forest department also conducts nature trails. In which tourist can go on foot and explore the jungle. This nature trail, tourists are allowed to venture inside the jungle in two areas of the buffer zone. One is Turia Trail and another one is Teliya Trail. Both these trails are around 3-5 kms and it will be for 2hrs or so. There will be a guide, who will be leading us in the trails. Both the trails are little bit different from each other. One has some ups and downs, we will walking on the slope. On the other we will be walking and crossing a river. It will dry most the time, except during the monsoon.

Part of the park situated in Maharashtra side has 7 entry gates for tourism purpose. Of these gates only two gates are often accessed by us from our camp.

Khursapar gate –
It is an area of 65 sq kms. This gate is 12kms away from our camp. This area is an undulating terrain. It does not have high hills, but majority of the area is full of ups and downs. It is fairly denser than the other area. It has one stretch of one way. There are some manmade saucer shaped waterholes, which is very much helpful for all the animals during the hot season.

Sillari gate –
It is an area of over 250 sq kms. This gate is 30kms away from our camp. This area is also an undulating terrain, it has some hilly patches. The special highlight of this area is, it is adjacent to the Totladoh dam and its backwaters area. The whole jungle is very beautiful with a mix of many type of habitat. There are open grassy patch, dense wooded patch, rocky and bushy patch, thick bamboo patch, dry open hilly area and freshwater streams.