Traveblogue Series – Tiger Reserve

So close yet so far.. This is what struck me when we decided to go for a short break holiday – to a Tiger Reserve. This truly was like the short breaks that we used to get in school and college. A break to be away with yourself and the family but not long enough to call it a holiday or a vacation.

A tiger reserve. If you think this where you will find tigers and tigers and tigers, you are not exactly right but not wrong either; and If did think that, then you have company because I also thought the same:-). I actually visualised meeting them close and face to face.. or them sitting in the verandah of the resort room early in the morning.. or crossing my path as I take a walk and me running helter skelter from the tiger’s jaws. Do you think any of this happened? Read on but don’t go now to the end of the blog to find out 🙂

This truly was an eye opener of a break right from the word go..

Another short break taken at the start of a long weekend. Roads were choc a bloc with traffic, eateries running to full houses trying to sell to their customers buffet breakfast option, as the a la carte area was already running heavy on requests for tables, parking lots jammed with cars of different shapes and sizes.. The smell of hot jalebis being made at the entrance of the eatery we stopped in, was tough to ignore.. Was the smell a welcome one or an unsolicited visitor to the senses? 🙂

After close to a 5 hour drive, we reached the Tiger Reserve. I thought there was only one Tiger Reserve and that goes by the name of Bandipur Tiger Reserve which is in Karnataka. Since we had our stay at a resort a few kilometers from Bandipur, I was under the impression that it just one Tiger Reserve. The roads just seem to wind and wind and wind with bundles of twigs and tall trees on either side. Suddenly the territory of Karnataka seemed to end and the territory of Tamil Nadu began. I continued with my puzzled look. “Why are we getting into Tamil Nadu? Aren’t we staying in Bandipur?” was my question. It was then that I saw another board that said ‘Mudumalai Tiger Reserve’.

This certainly is a HUGE Tiger Reserve that falls into two neighboring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and hence called differently as Bandipur Tiger Reserve and Mudumalai Tiger Reserve respectively. Made me think that the animals we may see today in one ‘reserve’, we may also see a few days later in another ‘reserve’, given the space for movement that they have within the HUGE total reserve. ‘

Our stay was at a resort in Masinagudi which was in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. Set deep in the woods, it was literally home for the next twenty four hours. The cottage was looking so good from the outside and when I went in and saw, one of the bathrooms looked like this.. Looked like a picture that Architectural Digest would feature 🙂

Walk into the rear verandah of the cottage and this is how it looks like.. This was the place to sit in with a hot cup of tea, a book and some discussion once in a while.. There was a mongoose which kept looking at us seated in the balcony, wondering to venture close to us or not and eventually decided to get closer to its ground.

Bamboo bamboo everywhere and not a paper anywhere – This place was with a lot of bamboo trees and the smallest rustle of wind resulted in a sound that resembles the pitter patter of rain drops. Amazing it was, when I would look up hearing the sound thinking if it was a rain drops and it would just be the sound and me 🙂

The hammocks tied between trees were just too tempting to be left alone.. It was fun to prop myself in it , read a book, stare into space thinking of nothing and just being with myself. It was even more fun, to play hide and seek with the sun that was shining between branches one moment and hiding behind them the next moment.. And before I realised it, I was lulled to sleep by the faint swinging of the hammock and the soft cool breeze.

The child within comes out to explore and understand certain experiences. The tree house was no exception and it was tempting to be tried out. Gingerly stepping up the rungs of the ladder, determined only to look at the next rung and not below nor up, I climbed up to the tree house and it was like a major feat achieved.  Monkeys are apparently aplenty up in the tree house always and fortunately for me none were present at that time (or did they know that one of their kind was coming and decided to stay away? :-)).

After all the exploration within the resort, it was time to move out of it and explore the area within the tiger reserve. The first to happen was the evening Safari ride which was for a duration of about a couple of hours. We were fortunate to have an aler and observant person who drove us around for the safari. A man of few words, his eye were constantly on the look out for animals. Some of the animals that he spotted were too quick on their feet to be photographed – a herd of deer, a sloth bear, 2 peahens who I wish had shown their beautiful plumage for us to see and a couple of Samba deers. A herd of elephants standing far away from the road were spotted and he quickly stopped the jeep in a position where we could see the elephants as clearly as possible. He also switched off the engine so as to not disturb them and alerted a few other jeeps about the elephants so that they could also enjoy seeing them. He would get annoyed when other vehicles honked as that would make the elephants move away.  Elephants don’t travel alone, they always go in a group. This time there were 4 elephants, two of them big and two of them small. One was a tusker.. The photograph below is one with the tusker while the others are around it and partially hidden also.

We did not spot a single tiger either during the safari or even during our return thru the reserve. Apparently the tigers are shy animals and people have seen them crossing the road in the reserve. The lady who runs the resort along with her husband told us that they had a dog who wanted to sleep on the verandah outside their house and refused to sleep anywhere else. One night a tiger had come and whisked away the dog and not a squeak was heard. A tiger trail was the only clue of what could have happened. Such a ferocious animal and they could be this quiet in what they do!!

The next morning we were to go bird watching but as the person who was to take us did not arrive, we went on a suddenly planned trek up a small hillock, with the gentleman owner of the resort. An unexpected change but one that led to a memorable experience.

Knowledgeable on many an area, there was so much to learn from what he shared. He was mentioning about a book called ‘Right of Passage’ on the Elephant Corridors of India – a book that he said is so informative and approved by many state governments but yet to to be implemented. This sounded so familiar!!

The trek up the hillock and down was about 6.5 kms and fairly a steep one. On the peak of the hillock was a temple of Lord Karthik (Lord Muruga) that was constructed under the direction of Mithun Chakraborthy, the Bollywood actor. I huffed and puffed for the first few minutes of the climb and thought back on the number of treks that I had taken on hillocks like this, as a part of my journey as a behavioral trainer. It was either age catching up or lack of trekking being done that was showing up or both put together.

We had two dogs climbing up the hillock with us – a mother – son duo. The mother was three legged having lost one leg in an accident. She effortlessly climbed the hillock with us. What an inspiration!! During the walk, I suddenly felt something wet at the back of my palm which jolted me. It was one of the dogs and I was like “Why oh why are you doing this to me? I am not even disturbing you.” As I was walking down the hillock I wished that we could have stayed for one more day, for me to do the trek once again and sit on the top of the hillock for sometime before starting down. Wishes and desires seem never ending, do they?

The return back to Bangalore thru the Mudumalai and Bandipur Tiger Reserve, gave sight to more animals. The two big elephants with a baby elephant, the deer with its sharp and long antlers and the Nilgiri Langur with its white mane and a beautifully featured face that was pitch black in color. A contrast that was stunning!!

What was even more striking were seeing monkeys standing on two of their legs, so upright that it looked like humans standing, craning their head to see what is happening in front of them.

One shocking incident that we saw that got all of us wanting to scream out – There were boards all thru the reserves that said ‘No feeding the animals’; and here there was this driver of a vehicle who had opened his window and was holding out his hand with some food in it. A monkey just leaped thru the window and had half its body into the vehicle making the other passengers scream in fear. It took the driver quite an effort to shoo the monkey out of the vehicle. Seriously, why do people break rules, thereby causing danger to the animals and themselves?

A memorable break came to an end with me determined to go there one more time. I left the Tiger reserve with  two thoughts –

– We are in an area which is occupied by animals and we need to give them their space for a free movement, a space that is not soiled with our littering and most importantly, not polluted with all the noise that we make by honking or screaming.

– The memories captured by our eyes are far more photographic and intense. Moments that sometimes get lost when we try to capture them with a camera click.. Being in that moment seems wiser than being with the camera..

As I end this blog, I would like to leave you with the captures of some moments with the sky. Stunning and amazing to see the hues of the sky. If you have not visited the Tiger Reserve, please visit it and if you have been there once, you could go again 🙂