When you realise the year has already begun and you still haven’t started what you really want to do, it’s time to stir things up a bit. And what better way than getting a bit wild, right here in India: in a super luxury safari lodge, of course. My pick is Mahua Kothi in Bandhavgarh, sensitively constructed so as to take nothing from its environment, whilst affording endless vistas over the lush green jungles of Kipling’s India. You can do nature walks, cycle, visit local villages and even have a massage in your own suite.

CC Africa along with Taj Group’s Resorts & Palaces has brought sheer luxury to the bush: think pure cotton sheets, down pillows, fine cutlery and crockery, superlative service. While such comforts are now fast spreading, Mahua Kothi leads the pack in elegance, atmosphere and the sort of old-fashioned hospitality for which many a traveller, weary of a ‘too-beautiful-to-serve’ attitude, yearns for. There are no contemporary corners here; service is still of the nothing’s-too-much-trouble kind, and the Kothi retains the old Maharaja feel of the hunting lodge it once was. Sofas are made for post-lunch naps, comfortable chairs by log fires invite a pre-dinner sherry, a sprawling lengthy veranda overlooks the misty wilderness and the jungle beyond provides an intimate setting for cuisine that’s spoken of in hushed tones. Guests have been enjoying extraordinary wildlife sightings at Bandhavgarh National Park: three tigers on a sambar kill; a tigress and two cubs feasting on a chital kill; a trio of dholes (wild dog); a pair of sarus cranes (the world’s tallest flying bird); large porcupine; leopard; a pair of Indian fox; and some rare sightings of the more elusive, shy creatures include the ruddy mongoose, a jungle cat and one lone male wolf!

What I instantly like about the Kothi is the fact that you pretty much have a private ranger, tracker, butler, and chef, plus your own 4x4, which means you can make your own plans, whether for forest drives, bush walks or tiger watching safaris. Believe it or not, here I watch a tiger a day and sometimes two a day and all in one action-packed safari! Tiger viewing is difficult in Bandhavgarh, only if you have some extraordinary amount of bad luck.
Mahua Kothi’s 21st century edge comes with its spa treatments, which offers the full pamper pack; the bonus is the birdsong assisting the wellness therapy that comes not from a tape, but the real thing flitting outside the window. Just 24 guests share the property, housed in a clutch of cottages nested within a grove of mahua trees and wild gardens, all displaying the attention to detail at which this property excels.

The heady sweet fragrance of the flower fills the senses as I walk through the carpet of dry sal leaves, to get to my mud and thatch covered ‘koti’ the entrance of which is protected by a huge wooden door. Typically, a huge padlock dangles on my door, but in true village style, the door is never ‘locked’. I learn that the lodge’s name draws its inspiration from one of India’s beautiful trees, the madhuca indica, commonly known as the mahua or butter tree. The locals gather the mahua’s sweet-smelling almond-sized flower, rich in vitamins – cook and eat them, or brew them into potent cocktails.
When you get to Mahua Kothi after the drive from Jabalpur, you are welcomed ceremoniously by the lodge’s general manager, Harpreet Singh Gill, a former tea planter and Kartikeya, a wolf/lion researcher turned naturalist, with a cool glass of sweet lime with mint. It is a magical place I think and I am assigned a suite in the midst of the mahua thicket. I feel rather intrepid until I stand on the foyer outside my room one morning, and spot fresh footprints in the dew. Probably wild boar, I am told.

It’s not too long before I head out to the national park for the afternoon safari in a specially constructed open-top deluxe 4x4 with three staggered heights of floor so that, unlike all other vehicles we saw, we could see everything with no one blocking the way. On the steep climb to the Bandhavgarh Fort, a 10th century statue of Vishnu reclines in the lush evergreen jungle. Here, Hindu devotees and pilgrims wash their feet in a rectangular pond of spring water that lies beneath this statue, which is 35 feet long. The pond is the source of the tiger reserve’s Charanganga stream.
From the 12th to the early 17th century, the family of the Maharaja of Rewa lived and hunted in its forests, but in 1968, as the tigers numbers declined through hunting and poaching, the property became a preserve intended to help and protect the tiger and its habitat. Soon the golden glowing disc of the sun embraces the plateau-like hills of the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, where the rich wildlife and diverse jungle are never ending reminders as are the sunset and sunrise of the eternal cycles of nature.

By the end of the afternoon’s game drive in the dense jungles of Bandhavgarh, I have seen so much of nature that I’d got a bit blasé. Still, absolutely nothing prepares me for the majestic stride of the largest male tiger of the Park. He stares at me intently as the ebbing rays of the sun stroke his agile body. We are barely a metre away from the animal, when my companions take the obligatory snap. Then I find myself quite unexpectedly in tears, when the tiger turns his huge, glowing eyes on me and does not look away. He is calm, haughty, and seemingly immovable, utterly proud, so to say. He makes that inscrutable feline eye contact with me and dares me to outstare him until the hair rises on the back of my neck and I give in. He wins, of course. That’s how close you get to nature here.

Restless to experience the wild side, we are up at the crack of dawn, heralding yet another flawless morning. In the space of a few moments, the sky seems flushed with streaks of pink and yellow, the air is crisp and fresh. Young sal trees planted in a line bordering a jungle road stand out in elegant black silhouette against the fiery sky, their leaves as big and round as dinner plates. A faint mist stretches over the grassy clearings. Shapes moving beneath it reveal themselves as chital, 10, 20, 30 of them watching the jungle. Scurrying amidst them are jungle fowl in a medley of red, brown and white. The air is still and the silence perfect. Suddenly, in the forest to the south, a sambar, the largest deer in India, barks its abrupt warning. Moments later, langurs add to the general alert, with a volley of staccato coughs. Clearly, some major predator is on the move. A peacock shrieks its harsh metallic honk. It probably is the tiger that killed a chital, two nights ago. There seems to be no other place like Bandhavgarh, where you can get so clear a picture of the wild India that visitors flock to see. The peculiar stillness, the sharp smell of wet grass that tickles the nose and morning dew glistening on it like a cascade of diamonds. The trees and scrub bushes seem to have just woken up, reaching out lazily to greet the weak rays of sunlight, filtering through the jungle cover.

All said and done, it’s a ‘weird life’ safari...supposedly rugged and close to nature, but living in great ambience, with a calibre of service, you’d be hard put to find in any five-star hotel. But then a five-star hotel, wouldn’t have a monkey problem or an elephant blocking the path. In any case, it’s my idea of a perfect holiday elephant safari, game viewing, bird watching or simply soaking in the jungle…absolute joy. For a truly rewarding safari experience, a three to five nights stay is recommended. You could spend months up there and never feel the loss of urban civilization. I had to settle for three nights. It certainly sufficed, but principally as a taster for more. The team at Mahua Kothi has married perfection to simplicity, put the chic into wildlife tourism experience and is upping the ante – clearly setting the bar for stellar safaris in India, with the start of the tiger circuit.
At night, as hurricane lamps light up the path to the open-air tandoori barbecue under the sky, dinner is served to the accompaniment of frog song, cricket cacophony and leopard cough and perhaps a few stars from the celestial canopy shooting towards the earth. Back to nature doesn’t come much better than this. Just don’t forget the binoculars!