River lodges
at Chambal

The National Chambal Sanctuary is a river, not a forest. It protects roughly 5,400 square kilometres along a 400 km stretch of the Chambal and the ravines for one to six kilometres on either bank, and three states run it jointly: Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. The Uttar Pradesh share is 635 square kilometres across the Agra and Etawah districts, taking in about 180 km of the river. The Chambal rises in the Vindhyan ranges in Madhya Pradesh and meets the Yamuna in Etawah district. It was first notified in Madhya Pradesh in 1978 and given sanctuary status in 1979, to bring back a gharial population that poaching had all but wiped out in the 1970s. Captive breeding and reintroduction were run from here.

The safari is a boat

There is no jeep drive through a core zone here and no permit lottery at eleven in the morning. You go out on the water in a flat boat and look at the banks.

Uttar Pradesh names the freshwater dolphin and the gharial as the sanctuary's flagship species, alongside mugger crocodile, smooth-coated otters and eight species of turtle including the red-crowned roof turtle.

The birds are the other half of it. Two hundred and ninety species of resident and migratory bird have been recorded here. Flamingo arrive in November and stay until May. Ruddy shelduck get in earlier, in September, and also stay until May. Indian skimmers hold large colonies on the sand and breed here in numbers, which is not true of many rivers left in India.

An hour from the Taj

This is the fact that decides most trips. Mela Kothi, The Chambal Safari Lodge is at Village Jarar, near Bah in Agra district, and its own distance table puts the Taj Mahal at 64 km and one hour away. The lodge is fourteen rooms and cottages in regrown woodland on a family estate, with resident naturalists and a printed checklist of the 200-odd species found on the grounds. Our two-night trip is built here.

The river itself is a little further. The lodge gives the access point for the sanctuary as 22 km away, a drive of just over thirty minutes.

That geography is the argument for Chambal. Agra is a one-night city for most people, and a crowded one. An hour east of it there is a river with crocodiles on the sand and almost nobody on the bank.

Why everything here is priced per person

At a tiger reserve you buy a jeep. One permit covers up to six people, so a couple pays the same as a family of six, and filling the vehicle is how you make it cheap.

Chambal does not work like that. A boat is not a fixed six-seat unit, the sanctuary entry is charged by the head, and a naturalist goes out with you. So the costing is per person all the way down, and a party of two pays half what a party of four pays rather than the same.

Across our own rate cards here, a river safari that includes sanctuary entry and a naturalist runs at about Rs 5,000 a person. The two land drives are priced the same way and at about the same level: a jeep safari to the Sarus crane wetlands, and a blackbuck safari into the ravines. The shorter cultural excursions, to Bateshwar, to the heritage village at Holipura, to Rapri, to Ater Fort and around colonial Etawah, sit at roughly half that per person, and the confluence trip to Bhareh between the two.

So budget Chambal per head and per activity, and expect no group rate for filling a vehicle. A couple doing one river safari and one land drive is the normal shape of a two-night stay.

The two land safaris are not filler

The Sarus crane drive is the serious one. The Sarus Crane Conservation Reserve begins about 30 km from the lodge and runs on for roughly 100 km of wetland broken up by cultivation. It is not a protected area in the legal sense; the Supreme Court designated it a reserve in 1999 and restricted development on it. It holds the largest breeding congregation of Sarus cranes in India. The drive takes four to five hours, involves walking, and suits people who actually want the birds.

The blackbuck drive runs about 30 km south-west towards the ravines, takes three to four hours, and crosses farmland at the lip of the badlands. Indian courser is one of the things to look for.

What the state does not publish

Uttar Pradesh sells online safari permits for Dudhwa, Kishanpur, Katarniaghat, Pilibhit and Sohagi Barwa. It does not sell Chambal boat rides, and no Uttar Pradesh Forest Department or state ecotourism page we can find publishes an entry fee, a boat charge or a shift timing for the National Chambal Sanctuary. We are not going to invent them. The boat and the sanctuary entry are arranged on the ground through a lodge.

The state's general conduct rules for protected areas do apply. An authorised guide is compulsory, nobody leaves the vehicle except at authorised places, no arms or intoxicants go in, and no music is played.

When it is open

Uttar Pradesh gives the visiting season as 15 November to 15 June and names winter as the best time to be on the water, when the crocodiles haul out on the sand in the morning sun. The bird calendar argues the same way. Flamingo are there from November to May and skimmers breed in the dry months before the river rises.

Getting there

The official distances disagree, because the sanctuary is 180 km long in this state and the two departments measure to different points on it. Uttar Pradesh Ecotourism gives Agra as 70 km by road and Delhi as 270 km by the Yamuna Expressway. The Uttar Pradesh Eco-Tourism Development Board gives Kheria airport at Agra as about 107 km and Agra Cantt station as about 104.5 km, with access on NH 45 and the Agra-Yamuna Expressway.

For the lodge itself, use its own figures. Agra and the Taj Mahal are 64 km and an hour. Delhi airport is 300 km and five hours. Etawah is the nearest useful railhead at 50 km and about an hour, and Agra Cantt is 65 km and about ninety minutes. Bharatpur is 130 km and Gwalior 120 km. Coming from Agra the transfer is short enough that an afternoon arrival still leaves you a morning on the river.