NAGPUR: Diwali used to be about spending quality time at home. That may be changing. This year, thanks to festival coming near weekend and awareness about Diwali pollution, hundreds are opting for forest getaways. Forest officials and tour operators say tiger reserves in Central India are witnessing record bookings. This specially true for Kanha, Tadoba-Andhari, Pench and Bandhavgarh. Pachmarhi is also a hotspot.
This is in addition to traditional winter destinations like Goa and South. With the onset of tiger tourism season from October 16, tiger reserves in the region started picking up traffic. It really picked with Diwali and resorts at most of these places are fully booked till November 15 when the vacation ends.
"For us, it is peak season as many tourists from cities like Mumbai, Kolkata Pune, Gujarat and Hyderabad visit places like Bhedaghat, Mandu, Omkareshwar and Kanha, Bandhavgarh and surrounding places. This time, Pench (MP), Bandhavgarh, Kanha and surprisingly Satpuda Tiger Reserve near Pachmarhi is also being preferred," said VP Singh, a tour operator.
He added many local and other tourists from outside the state are preferring reserves in MP over Tadoba as accommodation at Tadoba is scarce. In MP Pench, over 200 rooms with private resorts, 500 rooms at Kanha and 150 rooms at Bandhavgarh are occupied till November 15. "These are tourists who had made bookings when the park opened on October 16," Singh said. Even regular visitors to forest areas failed to get accommodation. "I just returned from Kanha on November 1, but failed to get a room in Bandhavgarh for November 8, where I planned to go after Diwali," said Adv Kartik Shukul. He added, "there is nothing special about Diwali. We go because there is vacation to the high court."
