Jharkhand

Leaving Kolkata is always hard. Kids are happy there with their cousins. Shreya and I can chill and catch up with friends. However, we had to leave as the journey was incomplete and there was the itch to continue further. I first wanted to further North to Gurudongmar lake in Sikkim. The roads to Lachen were demolished completely. Upon contacting the local people, they said that will take at least a couple of weeks for the roads to be repaired. Time, I did not have.

Cheetahs were reintroduced India in 2022 after extinction. They were brought from Namibia. News had also recently mentioned that more were being brought in from Botswana. I wanted to go to Kuno National Park and try my luck at viewing the elusive and shy animal.

To him that wills, ways are discovered

Way to Kuno on the other side of the country was arduous. Route options -

1. Travel through Gaya, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Lucknow, Agra, Gwalior, Kuno - Well established roads and National Highways and Expressways.

2. Travel through Jharkhand and MP and figure out the way.

We had gone to Prayagraj, Varanasi and Ayodhya 6 months earlier. I didn't want to travel through Uttar Pradesh again. I'd not visited Jharkhand or Madhya Pradhesh ever. I chose the path less traveled.

Jharkhand

After the hiatus, we had to really make an effort mentally to move out again. We stocked up snacks from Natures Basket in Kolkata and planned to leave on 21st April early morning. I decided to go to Netarhat. I had never heard of Netarhat before, but it is referred to as "Queen of Chotanagpur". It was a good 550+ km away. The roads to Kolkata were excellent from Balasore and we hoped to get similar roads back through to Netarhat in Jharkhand. Roads till Kharagpur were excellent but there was a lot of traffic. There was construction happening on the national highway in Jamshedpur. Starting at 7:30, we were near Ranchi around 2PM. Not bad at all.

Jharkhand Tourism Development Corporation (JTDC) the state tourism department has a new coal mine tour from Ranchi. I tried to get a booking for that. They declined that the tour is not organized over the weekdays and it will be very hot in the coal mine in summers so best be avoided. However, they did recommend staying at the JTDC hotel in Netarhat.

Roads outside Ranchi was very good, and the Jharkhand road development authority had done an excellent job. However, as cut towards Netarhat the roads through villages were not bad but not very wide either. It took use around 3 hours to cover 140 kms to Netarhat from Ranchi. Instead of going to the hotel, we directly went to the Magnolia sunset view point the way to which was through a beautiful pine forest.

I'm in love with a local Indian shepherd. The social and racial boundaries cannot be crossed. I would rather commit suicide from this beautiful view with my horse if my love can not fulfilled.

It is customary at Indian viewpoints to eat Maggi and we continued that tradition. Post that we headed to Hotel Prabhat Vihar by JTDC. As the name suggests the morning sunrise viewpoint was in the hotel itself and visible from the Balconies. This was the most spacious room we had in the entire trip. I had booked a family suite which came with two bedrooms with a king bed each and costed us around Rs 4200 only. The decor was dated and the at corners the walls were coated with paan spits. We had a hearty dinner, watched some TV and dozed off to wake up again at 5:30AM to view the sunrise. Dhimahi who was sleeping with me, woke up a little after I did; I guess due to missing body heat and viewed the sunrise with me. The sun was intense and it was quite hot by 9AM later. We got ready and was trying to figure out what to do. I asked at the reception what we could do and was suggested to go take a picture in front of the Netarhat Residential School. Hearing the suggestion, I realised I will have to figure it out myself. I figured the school must be important for some reason. Later, I realised all folks from Bihar and Jharkhand knew about this school - this was one of the most famous residential schools in erstwhile Bihar and now Jharkhand and was considered quite prestigious as aspirational. The suggestion to take a picture in front of the school is still a bit much, famous as it may be.

I decided to go to the Upper Ghaghri waterfall which did not have water really. Summit Nature camp at Netarhat was another place which I had considered staying, but they had only tents and I did not want to experience the heat first hand. However, the camp had activities which we decided to go for. The kids completed the obstacle course, and Dhimahi was brave enough to do a 100m zipline as well. There was a group of students who were camping there and applauded her bravery. Spurred Dhimahi decided to do it again. Devasya yet again skipped :(.

Post this we were to head to Betla National Park. I decided to stay the Forest department bungalows in the National Park itself. They were constructed new and looked quite nice with options for tree house and a cottage.

This was the most beautiful drive for me in the entire 8000kms. The journey was through the most beautiful, lush green landscapes with tall trees all around. The village roads were narrow permitting one car at a time. So, if a car came from the opposite direction both had to off road partially. Nevertheless, the traffic was minimal the canopy of trees spellbounding. I thoroughly enjoyed the drive for a couple of hours and was my favorite drive in the entire trip.

We reached Betla and was yet encountered with a perfectly normal Indian situation. We wanted to check out both the tree house and the cottage rooms to pick whichever we liked better. There were no other guests, so they were happy to show us the rooms but with this introduction -

हुज़ूर, आपको कमरा पसंद आएगा । एक नंबर कमरा है! AC भी है! लेकिन AC जैसे ही माहौल बनाएगा वैसे ही बत्ती चली जाएगी। AC को ठंडा करने में समय तो लगता है , वोह मिलेगा की नहीं पता नही। बाकी सब बढ़िया है हुज़ूर।

My lord, you will like the rooms. The room are top notch. There are ACs also. However, as soon as you will start enjoying the cooling of the AC there will be a power cut. AC needs time to cool the room, not sure if you will get that. Everything else is top notch my lord.

There was a UPS installed that will power the fan but not the AC. True to his word, the AC kept switching on and off the entire night but thankfully the UPS did not lose charge. Without the fan, the heat would have been unbearable, and the AC was cooling enough that we could sleep through through the blankets off and on the entire night.

That same evening, we did an evening Safari at the Betla National Park where we saw mostly deer, peacocks and some Gaur. There are supposed to be tigers but the sighting is rare and the last was 4 months ago. We did not expect to see any major animals. Given, that the Cottage(which we picked for staying over the tree house because it was more spacious) was in the National Park itself, we could actually see Deer, Peacocks and Langurs from our Cottage itself.

Experience at Government provided accommodation

Both at JTDC and Forest Department there was strictly online booking of the property. There was no manual booking. The governments have done a good job by adopting completely online processing to reduce corruption. Maintenance is poor and the people who occupy still need to be educated in how to use public conveniences. Nobody spits paan at a private hotel as they know would be penalised for it. Here also, I'm sure the common person maybe penalised but it is maybe government officers or elected officials who likely make it dirty as they feel more entitled. This is of course speculation only. Food was decent at JTDC, not the best but definitely not bad. They are a tourism focussed enterprise so atleast they served food in proper dinner ware with cutlery. The forest department restaurant delivered the oily food in a pouch tied with a rubber band. Not that we had high expectations but not so low either. While the forest department cottages were top notch, the food experience is so bad that I'll not recommend people staying here. If at Betla, better to stay the Van Vihar by JTDC which is also close by. At least, the staff is trained in basic hospitality being a tourism enterprise. However, the restaurant owner did provide bread omelette earlier than has opening to him - so kudos to him for doing that. Another aspect is dropping names at Government offices. These days all the contact persons names are online with phone numbers. I spoke to them before booking at JTDC or Forest Department. They were all very helpful people and are doing their jobs very well. At the Safari, I asked the contact to call up the Safari people here to make sure they give us a good ride. The result was that we got a Safari Jeep with a shade on top, while other people had an open jeep in the heat. Its the same privilege that is not standardised in India, sometimes I can be a beneficiary of it but sometimes on the other side.

However, with the dining experiences over the period of just 2 days, my daughter clearly said that she will prefer staying at a hotel with a breakfast buffet and she clearly said: -

No more government hotels.

There was a local who wanted to take us for local sightseeing. I wanted to go but that would set our schedule back by 2 hours and I decided to skip that. I felt sad about not being able to provide him an opportunity to generate income, but in hindsight it was a good decision and those 2 hours would have hurt us bad as we entered Madhya Pradesh.