The wild side
We’re familiar with urban India, thanks to our time in Mumbai and other large cities. We’re very fond of the heritage in places like Mysuru. But we’ve never experienced natural, wild India - until now that is. Yesterday we travelled from our idyllic spot in Madikeri to an eco-resort on the backwaters of the Kabini river, equally idyllic in an altogether different way.
It wasn’t an easy journey. Dear Sheka managed to negotiate his way through all manner of obstacles and though the distance wasn’t huge, it took us almost five hours to reach our destination.
Now we are here, we can relax and enjoy the simple life - complete with all mod cons, of course, wifi included!
I’ll write more about the resort when I have more time, because “relax” doesn’t mean “do nothing” here. We need to be ready for our wildlife drive!
First, we have to get to the other side of the river.
The vehicles can be loaded, binoculars given out and everyone issued with face masks - because of the dust.
Entering the National Park, our naturalist, Mr Kumar asked what we hoped to see. Black Panther, said one in hope more than expectation. More reasonably, tiger, leopard, elephant…actually, we’d be happy to see anything.
And so, we began our drive, each one of us keeping our eyes open for anything interesting. But it isn’t easy - nature is very clever at camouflage and it takes time to get in focus. Just what are we looking for? Should we look up, down, near, far?
You did see what someone saw in that photo above didn’t you? No, I didn’t either, so I snapped my camera and thought I’d look later…and eventually, I saw it.
“Look on the left fork of that tree - there’s a lizard” Kumar could spot things like magic!
I could not see any lizard! But my Hero had spotted it and pointed it out to me.
Thank heavens for great binoculars and zoom lenses! Oh, and for eagle-eyed naturalists! “We’ll head for the watering hole”, he said, “that’s where we often see something interesting”.
Sure enough, there they were. A pair of elephants standing on the other side of the water. One was giving himself a mudbath from a small puddle he was standing in. The other drank from the waterhole and seemed perfectly at ease.
shame my camera focused on the tree and not the elephant….
Sitting in the vehicle with the engine off, it was so quiet, we could hear the rustle from across the pond before the young male elephant made his appearance. How lovely to see him!
The three of them mooched around a little more before heading back into the same undergrowth from where the male had appeared. But it wasn’t quite over yet, because we learned that wherever there’s elephants, there’s likely to be a kingfisher.
And there he was, sitting on the tree where the elephants had been standing just moments ago.
We made frequent stops for monkeys, so many, in fact that it was agreed, we’d not stop for any more of them! Surely everyone had a decent photo by now?
Pulling up behind a bus full of young Indian men, we realised the lengths some go to to get that perfect shot, however. My little pocket camera pales into insignificance!!
In addition to the monkeys, the other most frequently seen creature was the deer. Several different types of deer, many of which had a bird on their back like this one.
We still hadn’t seen a tiger though. Or a black panther. But someone spotted a mongoose! Kumar explained it’s a Ruddy Mongoose,; the most common kind around here.
There stood a Sambalr, another, larger type of deer in a clearing too. And another type of mongoose - the striped neck variety, we were told (the largest mongoose in Asia). Are you impressed? Well, they’re not tigers are they?
A little further along, a large dark shape in the middle of the track piqued our curiosity - oooo! As we approached, it jumped and ran into the undergrowth. It was a gaur, we were told. An endangered species, we ought to have been thrilled to see such a rare beast - but it’s not a tiger or a leopard. Or a black panther. Fickle, aren’t we?
Our driver and naturalist guide did their best. We skittered off the beaten track to a side track to a more open space where there might be sloth bears. Sloth Bears!!! Now you’re talking! But there weren’t any to be found. We stopped to chat to another group and heard that someone said that a leopard had caught a small monkey and perhaps - perhaps - it would take it up a tree for safe keeping. Maybe if we stopped here and waited, perhaps we might see that?
But we didn’t.
By now, the sun was going down and the only chance of seeing anything was if it was so highly coloured, it stood out in the gloom. Hello kingfisher!
So we said goodnight to the little spider monkey and headed home. Over the river, in the dark, and back to the resort. We’d not seen the elusive big cats, but we’d seen three elephants and a few monkeys. And a Gaur! Let’s hear it for the Gaur, eh?!
Post Script (10 January)
We bumped into Mr Kumar whilst waiting for our river safari this afternoon. He was keen to show us a photograph he’d taken on this morning’s wildlife drive, confirming that the hundred or so tigers that are living in the park really are there. I stress…this is not my photo and we didn’t see this tiger ourselves, sadly!
Mr Kumar’s photograph of the tiger he saw on the morning wildlife drive on 10 January.
