Mr. Cliff & Friends Go On Safari- Part 1

Less than 18 hours after I landed in Bangalore, I was awoken by my alarm clock in the wee hours of the morning yet again to make a trek to an airport. But this trip  wasn’t for work or involve moving my life halfway around the world. This trip was for vacation and a little R&R with some old friends, so I was excited. I even got to say hi to my old driver Shyam (who is now Jayme and Andrea’s driver), as I caught a ride with them to the airport. After some minor hiccups at the B’Lore airport (I had forgotten all of the ridiculous steps they make you go through when boarding planes there), we met up with the rest of our party, including my old travel partners Andrea and Dr. Alan along with Andrea’s mom Ada who had just arrived for a visit, and newly arrived second term expats Andi and Mike Marston. (For those of you counting at home, that’s 3 Andreas and 1 Ada in the female ranks of the crew.)

After an uneventful flight we touched down in Nagpur, which is right smack dab in the middle of India (also known as BFI), and found our transportation that drove us a few hours to Baghvan Resort on the outskirts of Pench National Park. Pench National Park is home to one of 3 tiger reserves in the area, and was the setting for Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”. Fun fact:  Kipling was actually born in India, and if you look at the animal characters in the book, you find most of them at Pench, and most of their names are Indian.



Come to think of it I have encountered many people that act like they were raised by a pack of wolves, much like Mowgli.....

Even though we were really out in the middle of nowhere, there’s no way we could claim that we were “roughing it”. The resort was incredible. It was small, our group took up nearly half of the entire place, but it was awesome. The bungalows themselves were top-notch, but still rustic enough that you knew you were still in the wilderness. Simple yet lavish at the same time.  Each one had its own outdoor shower, and an open air bedroom up top that you could choose to sleep in if you wanted. The rest of the grounds consisted of a “great hall” that included the kitchen, dining room, and sitting areas, and then the pool and the staff quarters. All were in their own nice little secluded areas.



Upstairs open air bed.



Private outdoor shower.




The sitting area in the great hall.



The hospitality was second to none. The kind of attention you get from the staff almost borders on annoyance, until you slow down and tell yourself they are just doing their jobs, and doing them very well. The food was beyond description. I was slightly worried going into the trip that I wouldn’t be able to ease my system back into the Indian cuisine, but those fears were quickly put to rest. From the first meal we ate, I could tell that the food would be the least of my worries. The only issue was slowing down and not eating too much because it was so delicious. I did not succeed in that.


Every time you drove in or out of the grounds the staff came out to greet you.

 The head chef Sachin was incredible, cooking up delicious dish after delicious dish using mostly ingredients from the on-site organic garden. You literally had to be forceful with he and his staff to get them to stop bringing food. Somehow they packed about 5 meals into a day. About 5 AM every morning before our first safari, they had tea, coffee, cookies, donuts, and fruit sitting out for us. Then they packed muffins, sandwiches, cookies, and other goodies for us to eat on our safari. Then when we got back around 10 AM, they cooked us a full Indian breakfast. Then at 1 or 2, we had lunch, followed by a full dinner that evening. I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten more food in just a few day span.

Sachin working his magic.

The group sitting down for one of our 6 thousand meals. I'm guessing this was 3rd breakfast.

 At our meal the first night, someone asked Sachin how he made one of the dishes. That got him really excited, and somehow he turned that first into an Indian food cooking lesson, and somehow that evolved into a Masterchef competition. So the next afternoon we made our own lunch while learning the intricacies of Indian food cooking. The teams were divided up guys vs. gals, and the competition consisted of a quiz portion which the women dominated (I think the only questions the guys got right were: “Name two brands of India Wine”, and “Name the National Soup of India” which Jayme knew from the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld). There was also a blind taste test where we were blindfolded individually and told to name the main ingredient of a certain sauce. The women won this one as well, as they all agreed on the correct final answer. I actually got it right as well, but I wasn’t confident enough in my answer to convince the rest of my teammates. The answer was Spinach. I think the men won the actual cooking portion of the competition (and let’s be honest, isn’t that by far the most important part?) but apparently the women won the overall title. Which is ok. I wouldn't have expected the women to win a wood chopping contest (or insert some other chauvinistic comment). It was a fun time nonetheless.


Jayme and I were clearly having fun putting the finishing touches on our delicious dish.



Being a lifelong hater of spinach, I was able to correctly guess the secret ingredient.



Putting my 4-H skills to good use.

The other meal of note was our final night, where they took us to a special place on their grounds where they had lit the entire pathway with lanterns. And when we got to where we were about to eat we saw a gigantic tree lit up with dozens of lanterns. At first I thought they must be electric, and the tree wired somehow, but upon closer examination they were indeed real lanterns. I asked Sachin how much time it took to hang all of the lanterns from the tree, he nonchalantly said it took a few guys the entire afternoon to hang and light the lanterns. Just for this meal for probably a dozen people total. Amazing. Unfortunately it was tough to photograph, but it was pretty magnificent. As usual the food was amazing, and it was a perfect last night for my first trip back in the country.



Lovely little lantern/candlelight dinner.



You can kind of see some tables in the bottom right corner to give you an idea of how huge this tree was.

 I didn’t set out with the intentions of this trip garnering two separate blog posts, but I see I’ve already typed over 1000 words just talking about the food and the lodging, and I haven’t even gotten into the safari’s yet…..so I’m going to cut this one off and start a new one for the animals or else it might take three hours to read one post! (My friend Casey likes to make fun of me for getting into too many worthless details when I describe my experiences, so I’m sure she’ll have a hay day with this one. Well, eat it, Casey. This is my blog, not yours. )

Next post I promise will be all about the cool animals and things you might actually want to hear about!