Chidi Kho Trek and The Jungle Book

I

The Trek

It was the third weekend of January, a long one. The morning in Bhopal was predictably chilly, though the light fog lifted within an hour. A motley group of about fifty trekkers—young and energetic, old but sportive, serving officers and pensioners, homemakers enjoying a brief respite from the routines of home, and a few children, the youngest still shy of four—set out for Chidi Kho Wildlife Sanctuary, seventy kilometres away. Most reached before nine; a few straggled in soon after.

Bhagavati Prasad Sharma, a short, stocky man in his early forties, was our guide. He worked part-time, as visitors came mostly on winter weekends. Summers were too harsh, and weekdays too quiet to sustain a full-time livelihood. That morning, he seemed both excited and slightly flustered by the size of the group, which included several veteran forest officers.

Before the trek began, he gathered us under a sprawling banyan tree and delivered a brief welcome.

“Jai Raghunath Ji ki. That is how we begin any enterprise in these parts. The ruler of Narsinghgarh never called himself king. Raghunath Ji was the King, and the ruler only his Dewan.

“I grew up in a nearby village. This forest has nourished me, and I owe a debt to it. I guide visitors because of my attachment to these woods.”

He might have continued, but a senior officer cut him short.
“Enough about yourself. Tell us a little about the flora and fauna—in two or three minutes.”

Most trekkers had already skimmed the glossy brochure handed out at the entrance and were in no mood for a lecture. Each picked up a complimentary green cap, a slender bamboo staff, and a small water bottle, and we began the walk.

“It’s rather late to sight animals,” the guide warned. “But you will feel their presence.”

The trek turned out to be more of a leisurely walk. The initial climb to Chacko Point was modest, and the descent at the end posed no challenge even for the senior citizens. Much of the five-kilometre trail ran across a rocky plateau with sparse vegetation—varieties of jungle grass and scattered palash, khair, mahua, saja, and amaltas trees, all sturdy survivors of the tropical deciduous climate.

We had walked less than a hundred metres when the guide stopped and pointed to a small heap in the middle of the dusty track.

“That’s sai poop—porcupine, in English. Plenty of them here. They are nocturnal, rarely seen during the day.”

A little further, he pointed to diagonal marks on a tree trunk.

“Those are from a sambar. After shedding old antlers, the new ones come covered in velvet. They rub against trees to remove it.”

Soon the trail began to tell a more dramatic story. We saw several droppings of panthers and many more of nilgais—both carnivore and herbivore appearing to compete in a relay race to claim the trail with their markings.

“Both animals mark territory through dung and urine,” a senior forest official explained.

Then we came upon a substantial heap where nilgais had been defecating for weeks. On top of this communal mound lay a fresh deposit from a panther.

“That’s unusual,” the officer said. “Cats usually scrape the earth, defecate, and cover it. This one chose to dump directly on the nilgai heap.”

The implication was clear: a territorial message.

Go elsewhere. My territory is not your toilet.

At other spots, panther droppings lay uncovered on the rocky ground. There simply wasn’t enough loose soil to hide them. But here, the animal had carefully avoided pawing the nilgai heap. It was beneath his dignity, perhaps.

At another point, we found a scrape where the soil was still damp.

“She was here early this morning,” said the guide. “Maybe two hours ago.”

On a north-western slope stood a pale, leafless tree.

“Ghost tree,” someone said. Sterculia urens. Its smooth, white bark glowed faintly, even in daylight. Often leafless for months, it survives on the quiet labour of its pale skin, turning sunlight into food.

Nearby, jungle rats had dug a maze of tunnels with multiple exits—escape routes from snakes and other predators. A rock lizard basked on a stone, refusing to move when an over-curious trekker tried to shoo her away with a stick. She seemed more intrigued than frightened—an old resident tolerating an intrusive visitor.

Midway through the trek lay the Dheeng Dev cave, an optional detour. It required a careful descent using a thick nylon rope tied around tree trunks, with helpers steadying those unsure of their footing.

Inside was a Jain cave with a headless Tirthankar, carved from a single rock. A student of history in the group pointed out the ratna on the chest.

“A Tirthankar, no doubt,” she said.

The head, someone explained, had likely been hacked off by plunderers. And as if the beheading were not enough, semi-literate vandals had scrawled their names across the torso.

Mahavira had preached a life of non-violence. His followers carved statues of the twenty-four Tirthankars so their teachings would endure. The vandals had added their signatures in search of a two-minute taste of renown and immortality.

On an adjacent hill lay Karbatia cave—a narrow cleft between two towering rocks, negotiable only by walking sideways. It was not for the claustrophobic.

The forest guard narrated local folklore. In Sat Yuga, he said, the Devi temple had been built in a single night by Vishwakarma, the divine architect. A rakshasa once tried to plunder the goddess’s ornaments, but when she raised her trident, he fled—tearing apart the mountain as he escaped. The narrow cleft, he said, was the mark of his desperate flight.

Hidden among the hills were caves with ancient rock paintings. A local guide offered an enthusiastic interpretation—battle scenes between rival rulers, caged birds, their release. The king on a horse painted in red, the queen on a camel in yellow. Folklore, perhaps, rather than archaeology.

When we finished the trek late afternoon, we had not seen a single large animal. Yet the forest was alive with presences.

The porcupine’s pellets, the sambar’s scratch marks, the leopard’s scrape—each was an entry in a silent record.

It struck me then that the jungle is not silent at all. It is simply written in a language most visitors cannot read.

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II

The Jungle Book

Chidi Kho sanctuary is rather quiet and understated; not a forest of towering sal or uninterrupted teak, but a mixed deciduous mosaic—grassland edges, scrub, and scattered trees thriving on rocky soil and modest rainfall. A large lake and several waterholes in the valleys sustain the animals.

Here, presence is not proclaimed loudly. It is inferred.

A rubbed trunk, a dung heap placed with intention, a spray of urine—these are the sanctuary’s punctuation marks. To read them is to understand how different species claim space without fences or flags.

The jungle, in fact, is a journal.

To the casual visitor, it is only a green mass of trees, shadows, and occasional movement. But to a trained trekker or forester, it is a text—constantly being written, revised, and annotated by its inhabitants. Every animal that passes leaves an entry.

A forest track is a logbook. It records who passed, when, and in what condition.

A set of fresh pugmarks may tell you that a leopard crossed at dawn, walking, not stalking, probably a male, heading toward water. Hoofprints nearby might reveal that a herd of chital passed earlier, their tracks overlapping in the soft soil. Sharp edges mean recent passage; blurred ones suggest time has passed.

The jungle also keeps a ledger—a record of claims and boundaries.

A leopard’s scrape on a path, a jackal’s scent mark on a rock, a nilgai’s dung heap—each is an entry in this ledger. These are not aggressive declarations, but courteous notices:

I was here. I use this route. Let us avoid unnecessary conflict.

The ledger is maintained not by fences, but by scent and sign.

Then there is the jungle’s gazetteer—its record of place.

Porcupine quills near rocky outcrops suggest nearby burrows. Scratched mahua trees hint at sloth bears. Repeated alarm calls of langurs warn of a predator’s movement. Without a map or GPS, a forest guard can describe the landscape simply by reading these signs. The jungle has already written the gazetteer; he merely recites it.

Most visitors cannot read it.

They see only a tree, a patch of mud, a pile of dung. The trained eye sees species, age, direction, intention—and often the story that links them. Reading the jungle requires patience, practice, and a willingness to look down at the ground as often as up at the canopy. It is like learning an ancient script. At first it is meaningless; then letters emerge; finally, whole sentences speak.

What makes the jungle’s journal remarkable is its honesty. There are no lies in it.

In human society, records can be altered, accounts manipulated, stories embellished. But the forest keeps an incorruptible archive. It records everything without bias or exaggeration.

The jungle is always writing, but it never speaks aloud. It expects its readers to come prepared—with quiet steps, sharp eyes, and a patient mind.

A good forester, tracker, or trekker is not a conqueror of the jungle, but its reader. He walks slowly, head slightly bowed, as if reading a long manuscript. Every few steps he pauses, noticing a faint scrape, a pellet heap, a disturbed patch of dust. To him, these are not random signs but sentences in a familiar language.

By the end of the walk, he can narrate what happened during the previous night.

The jungle does not hide its secrets.
It only writes them in a script that must be learned.

And in places like Chidi Kho, the book lies open for anyone patient enough to read.

***

Dudhraj (Indian Paradise Flycatcher)- 

State Bird of Madhya Pradesh, is often found in Chidi Kho.

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