Monday, 27 February 2012

Wilderness camp

After a long time, I had chance to get out of my routine life and gather with my school friends.

This gathering was not for other friend's marriage or any other bachelor party. We gathered to get closed to nature. To be precise wild.

After sniffing for tourists places on the way to Mysore from Bangalore on Friday (24/Feb/2012). A night stay at Mysore gave us little rest, for the next day adventure.

Next day morning, we started our journey towards the actual spot. Finding the way was little difficult, though we took the help of GPS, local peoples [with out knowing the language]. We had quarrels bcoz of inquiring the route but changed them to fun and enjoying it. We finally reached the check-post to enter 'K.GUDI'

K.Gudi is a forest area on top of BR hills. It is time of transition from summer to autumn, all the trees welcomed us bald(lost almost all of their leaves). But we were waiting to visit in such a weather. We were driving for few kms, except our vehicle's engine growling there was no sound. There was little fear in us, reason: its migrating time for elephants(to nearest water bodies) and we should not disturb them. Tossing a car is none of the matter for them. But fortunately nothing came in our way except few spotted deers and jungle fowls. 10 kms drive on the hill and we reached the jungle resort.

Since we were traveling for the second day, we thought of relaxing a while in the tents/huts we reserved. We then warmed up our muscles by playing Table Tennis (Actually, we wanted to empty our stomach. Bcoz there was delicious lunch awaiting ;)). After sumptuous lunch, again some relaxing. But this time we were binding ourselves into the silence of the jungle.

Mid of the day,  even though sun was smiling generously there was breeze. The silence of the forest makes you feel lighter. A quick power nap, it was 4PM. Time for Jungle safari (the most awaited). We got ready with all our optical devices (cameras, binoculars etc). 3 Hrs of safari in an open jeep with a friendly naturalist cum guide. Nothing much to see except few common sighted animals like, spotted dears, sambhar dears, barking dears, wild boars, languors and herd of bison.

From the moment Sun went down, temperature inside forest started dropping drastically. We have to return to our dens. Again delicious dinner, few hours of talk under light which was powered by a generator. Person in-charge gave a warning call that he is going to switch off the generator. We came to our tents to prepare our bed. We had a surprise guest visited inside. A wild spider, 15cms in width. Security nearer helped us get rid of it.

Next day, morning 5.30am we woke up for a safari again with the same person. Now he became socialized with us, and started explaining about things in and around the forest. Except this chat and two hours of drive we had nothing to see.. We were returning to our base disappointingly. "Chances of animal sighting is more in evening. Morning it will be less" - A dialogue told by another naturalist while dinning last night came to mind. We all with sad faces and clicking the dry trees for the sake of coming.

All of a sudden, our naturalist friend spotted a 'Wild Dog'. Wow! it was not alone (as-usual), their was eight of them. For few minutes we were following them. Then we understood that they are searching for their prey. With the intention not to disturb them further we returned back to our base happily. There were two other vehicles in to forest for safari but they didn't spot any animal. We were LUCKY.

To top up the feeling of wildness, we came back to Mysore zoo saw few rare varieties of animals. And now back to square one. With almost two to three less-slept nights and 1000Kms of travel I am tired as-usual :)

PS: Photos are still in cameras, will share them once I get a chance.

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