Introduction

Sloth bear (Melursus ursinus) safaris are very much possible at Central India region. They are native to Indian subcontinent. Their prime habitat includes forested regions like dry forest (deciduous and tropical), scrublands, grasslands with rocky outcrops and wetlands. At Central India region, we can easily find matching habitat locations at Panna tiger reserve, Satpura tiger reserve, Kanha tiger reserve, Pench tiger reserve etc. Thus these forests are considered as the best sloth bear safari habitat destinations and are considered ideal for sloth bear safari tours.

Destination Selection

While selecting the destinations for sloth bear safari tour, we need to be carefully ensure following points in mind:

• Good safari road network: Now question arises what is safari infrastructure. Here by this, we means that forest should have proper safari trails to access the probable sighting zones. At under-developed sanctuaries or national parks, safari trails are very restricted due to which we can't access the different areas of forest where sighting chances are high. At Panarpani zone of Satpura national park and Sarhi zone of Kanha national park, we face this challenge.
• Safari vehicles availability: Their are many sanctuaries and national parks which are not popular due to which here safari vehicles are either need to booked well in advance or totally unavailable thus we have to use our own car which is inconvenient option for jungle safaris and wildlife photography.
• Knowledgeable safari guide: Today, majority of wildlife tourists are visiting wildlife destinations in search of tigers due to which safari guides are also working with tiger centric mindset and developed their skills for tiger tracking. Sloth bear safari is not very commonly done by visitors thus normal guides have not developed their skills or knowledge as per bear tracking, collecting the updates on current bear sighting areas. Thus here we need to clear our safari agenda in advance so that our safari guide will collect latest updates on current sighting areas, point out the spots where sighting probability will be high, check the estimated timing of the day when bear movement will be high etc. 
• Night safari provision: Sloth bears are often considered as more a nocturnal mammal species thus we should try to choose those destinations where night patrol safaris are allowed in sloth bear movement areas. Night safari provision is available at popular tiger reserves only and often unavailable in wildlife sanctuaries. At Panna national park, night safari drives are very effective for sloth bear sighting, especially in Jinna safari zone which lies in buffer forest area. Here we need to note the point that night patrol safaris are allowed only in buffer zone forests and restricted in core zone forest of any tiger reserve.

Best time to see Sloth Bears

Sloth bears do their routine movements throughout the year thus they can be seen during jungle safari drives at anytime of the year. Their is not period when we can say that it is period of zero possibility. Still through our safari experience of different periods of the year, we can say that period from Feb to May month is the best time to see sloth bears movements to do photography and videography. Mother bear with cubs are often seen in this period. As majority of cubs are born in December-January months this we can expect their first appearance in period of Feb-May. In addition to this, presence of Mahua flower, dryness in forest, limitation of waterholes, termite hills etc are some major factors which are responsible for better sighting possibility, in this period.

Tour Planning

If you are planning for a wildlife photography tour with sloth bears in mind then begin your initial planning 6-7 months in advance. You can divide your planning schedule as:

Preparedness for Sacrifices or Compromises

When we will be on sloth bear safari, we need to be mentally prepared for some other animal sighting sacrifices. Here our main indication will be towards big-cats (tigers, leopards) sighting. During day time safaris, we may find us in situation when we will have two possibility where first one will offer us chance to see tigers / leopards and second choice will be to check new spots for sloth bears. In such situation we may have to lose the chance for tigers sighting due to taking chance for sloth bear sighting. Here we need to remain calm and never regret on missing such opportunities. Sometimes we will have bear sighting but will be so short that we may not get time to take photographs and animal get disappeared. During night safari drives, we may not get good photographs due to poor lighting conditions and thus we will have to rely on videography of sighting. Here we may choose the middle path policy in which we will do the photography of every important thing, coming on our way, during safari drive, without loosing focus on sloth bear like if tiger, leopard, birds seen during our safari movement, take quick photographs and move on. This will give us better satisfaction.