A two day wildlife photography trip to the Dhikala Zone and Bijrani Zone of Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand yielded great result. The trip this time being in the middle of hot summer days when temperature in plains is touching 40 degrees, was perfect from sightings point of view.
While we were preparing in Ramnagar, the temperature was at 37 but it dropped no sooner we reached Sultan, our stay in Dhikala Zone. When we reached the Dhikala Zone, we found that the water level has gone back by at least 5 kms south side from our last visit. The vast green grasslands of Dhikala was open in front of us.
Our first safari started with an unexpected gift at the Mota Sal Road in Dhikala. A very close encounter with the Royal Bengal Tiger. What better start can it be to our journey. The male tiger came out of the bush and walked just towards our vehicle and then moved away. The small but long lasting event happened for just over ~20 seconds or so.
After lunch at the Canteen we continued on our exploration till we reached our rest house in the evening. The results made us really happy. Surprisingly only one number of crocodile was visible in the long stretch of Ramganga River.
The next day we again moved towards the Dhikala area and we did spend some quality time photographing the Pheasant, lots of Elephants and jumping Deers.
After some time in the deep forest, we thought why not spend some time in the flat lands. The encounter with the beautiful Hog Deer was particularly encouraging. After this while getting out of the Dhikala Zone, a perfect ending to the time by a dancing peacock.
The Bijrani Zone is known for sightings better than Dhikala. But for us it was other way round. This time we looked above ground and the scenes were really encouraging.
Overall a 2 day trip from home made us come back with really nice memories of the park. Time to set expectations even higher from the foothills of the Himalayas.