Pristine and clean, silent and mysterious, natures bounty in varied hues - Pench National Forest - a tiger reserve ! Here for the Telethon tomorrow the entire day for Save the Tiger Campaign for NDTV. Set in the middle and heart of the jungle, this unique resort Baghvan, is sparse but steeped in the natural environs of the forest. Nothing fancy but fancy enough ! Just 14 cottages, designed in different formats, exclusive and a delight to occupy. Best part - the shower in the open concept ! Had seen something similar at a Safari Park in South Africa and had spent a few days there.

The silence is too noisy !

Its a 2 hour drive from Nagpur where you land. Nagpur being in Maharashtra and Pench in Madhya Pradesh. Indeed the forest area for the tiger also divided by the boundary of the two states into two parts. Nagpur, the winter session city for the state. Nagpur, the orange capital of the nation. Nagpur the central point of India. Nagpur where the focal of all air communication emanated. I cannot remember whether it was the mail or the passenger traffic from this city, but Nagpur became the central point where all mail came in from all parts of the country and then disseminated to their respective destinations. So one aircraft travelled from say Delhi to Nagpur and back, but carried all mail from the other places because it all was collected there. Pretty ingenious !

On arrival though, driving through the city, one sees huge development and neat wide roads and all modernization methodology in practice. But once near the forest area the scenario changes and dense and thick foliage takes over, leading us to the sanctuary called Baghvan, a Taj managed hotel facility. All the concerned production people busy and about their jobs quickly organize an immediate visit to the forest for they say, a tiger has been sighted. The camera team and all gear up, we drive out and sadly after a couple of hours return empty handed so to say. The tiger has moved and cannot be traced. So we console ourselves with the sitings of spotted deer, sambar, langur, bison or gaur as they call them here and return. Tomorrow starts the Telethon for the Save the Tiger campaign and there is desire and hope to collect as much money as one can for the benefit of those that manage and look after these regal animals and prevent them from being poached and destroyed.

The signal weakness here in the middle of the forest is a bit painful, because I did want to post some rather interesting photographs and the application is just not opening …

Apologies ! I am just concerned whether this post will go through or not. So am rushing to finish this and perhaps tomorrow when the net connect improves, we shall attempt to get you some visuals of the area …

Good night and be in good cheer !

Amitabh Bachchan