Pashan Garh Panna National Park - A Taj Safari Lodge

One of the first visits into a small sanctuary property of Taj in Pashangarh Panna, turned out to be an adventurous and amazing stay. The sprawling property of 200 acres of which a small portion houses the rooms, spread out in clusters, itself gave a stay in a forest, with easily spottable spotted Deer, peacock, wild boar and langurs ( luckily they don’t disturb humans) and the occasional civet, pangolin to give company. The movement of guests, without staff is fully discouraged within the area, though The villa ( sorry for the urbane term), was rustic, flooring with cobbled stones and huge bedroom, bathroom and the courtyard of sorts with a gazebo, is quite royale in a jungle. It therefore comes with the dedicated team to keep the guests happy in every way, whether making multiple trips for every need and also ability to reach in short time. Though I cannot expect them to be as suave as their city colleagues, but their humility, open minded conversation and enthusiasm to keep us happy is great and well appreciated We had a nice 3 night stay, comfortable, relaxing and lucky to have kept our date with 6 tigers in the only morning safari to the core area that we went. The only two suggestions that we have, related to the show area ( water spills everywhere) where the platform is flat with no water drain from it. An advice to guests to only visit the core area, as the safari in buffer area is just a waste of money. A big thanks to our naturalist Dipanshu, care taker Prakash, room service Sunil and Ajay in front office and all of those nice smiling faces who made our stay memorable.

Pros - there are 12 cottages in 200 acres so nice jungle feel. Staff is very sweet & respectful but they are untrained (most of them are locals from nearby and none of them have done any sort of formal training it seems). Cons - very basic rooms (not worth the price.at all), showers are a nightmare (hot becomes cold without warning), food is pathetic (there is no flavour or taste and the service is also really bad with the staff completely unable to handle basic food needs). Given you are stuck in the property which is middle of nowhere, there is no option but to eat their bland food. Also the property doesn’t even have a basic activity room for adults with games or like a pool table or carrom (so post the morning safari, the whole day there is nothing to do but watch the jungle from your room which is nice but beyond a point, it would have been nice to have other stuff to do). There is nothing for kids to do here so forget about coming here with kids. For the price being charged, this property is not worth it. There are many other nicer properties in the region which one can explore. Sorry Taj Safari - you fail to impress.

My wife and I had an incredible stay here. It doesn't get any better than this - saw 10 tigers (including 4 cubs) and so many other incredible animals - huge thanks to our two naturalists that were absolutely stand out. The food was incredible - we had one of the best biryani's we've ever had and the dinner in the woods was beautiful and truly delicious. Every single person we interacted with was thoughtful, kind, and so welcoming. We'll be back.