Bandhav Garh game viewing

Bandhav Garh game viewing is pretty much a joke.  The park itself is 1,700 sq kilometers yet game viewing is restricted to 200 sq kilometers.  Within those 200 sqk there are three zones called 1,2,3.  Each zone has it's own autonomous authority so the rules for each zone is different.  For instance zone 1 allows you to drive one way on the roads so you can't turn around and backtrack...pretty stupid for game viewing.  Every zone has the operating hours of 6-10 am and 3-6 pm...regardless of when sunrise and sunset is for that particular part of the year.  so what happens in the evening, just as the game is starting to move at about 5:30, we are forced to leave the park.  If a guide does not leave the park by exactly 6 pm he will probably get this license suspended.  So at 5:30 there is a mad rush to the park exit.

So the next question is how do you get assigned a certain zone?  Zones are assigned at the time of booking.  The more advance your booking the more likely you will get assigned the best zone. We were assigned zone 2 the first morning and we saw tiger plus a lot of other game.  For the other three game drives we were assigned zone 3 and did not have a very good experience.  Those in zone 2 had consistently better game drives.  Sad to think a tourist hoping to see tiger could spend thousands of dollars to get to this point and then have Indian Wildlife Authorities prevent him from having the best chance.

So the moral of the story is, book early or don't book at all.  It's not worth it.