When I sat down to prioritize the list of subjects that I had in my memory library to blog, this subject demanded the utmost, by far. I am gonna title it "The Ultimate Trip" as I will be sharing some of the experiences that we had during our trip in India, last summer.
The planning for this started roughly a month before my scheduled homecoming after 2 ½ years from the US. The reason for the early start being, almost all participants of this trip were working in different places within India and some abroad, so it becomes imperative to allocate sufficient time to plan and organize things. Logistics for the entire trip was carried out by my Dad, assisted by my brother Kumar. Logistics, I must say was the most critical and daunting task, especially considering the list of places that we had in our itinerary, of which, most of them were remote locations and some of them fell in other states. The itinerary included, but not limited to Mysore, Nagarhole wild life sanctuary (Karnataka), veynad wild life sanctuary (kerla), Mudhumalai wild life sanctuary (Tamilnadu), Ooty and its surroundings.
The total duration of our trip was 6 days and the total number of participants stood at Eight, spilt into two groups Group One (G1) and Group Two (G2). G2 was headed by my brother Kumar and it included Arun and Dinesh. G1 was headed by me and it included Badri, Vatsa and Dinesh.Rc, which brings the count to 7, Ganesh joined us during the course of our trip in Ooty on day three, making it full count.
Day One:
After almost a month of preparations, the actual day came. we (G1) barely managed to adhere to our departure schedule for the day one, which by the way was very important for two reasons, one being, the amount of distance that we had to cover on day one, which stood substantial (700+ KMs), and the second being, I am the sole driver in the group. We (G1) left udumalpet around 4.45AM in a Santro Zing, the car that my dad could finally offer me for the trip. I was disappointed with the car initially, as I was hoping for a Scorpio, but I must say the car was amazing to drive, it had awesome handling and power, which allowed us to cruise nicely at 70 KMPH. We had our first pit stop at the outskirts of Thirupur for tea around 6.15 AM, and then continued to drive; we passed through number of towns and villages en-route to Mysore, of which only a hand full of them is worth mentioning (Sathyamangalam, Dhimbam and chamrajnagar are some). Badri and Vatsa sat in the back seat and were dozing until the sun came up really hard, while Dinesh.Rc in the passenger seat was busy changing songs, Occasionally CD's and more importantly keeping me brisk. we had breakfast just after entering karnataka at a place called Samrajnagar, the breakfast was less than OK, but did its part by keeping us off hunger for the next 4 hours. The plan for the day was to meet (G2) at the outskirts of Mysore around 11.00 AM and then continue to drive together to Nagarhole, our first place of visit in the itinerary. G2, by the way started from Bangalore, Dinesh (G2 coordinator) called us around 9.00 AM to inform their start and he didn't waste any time in justifying their position for starting late by 45 Minutes, saying my brother kumar (sole driver in G2) overslept because he had to work late the previous night to finish up some of his next week tasks, as he wont be in next week. That made me to go little easy on the gas, as we didn't want to wait for them for a longtime. Dinesh kept updating their progress frequently, which helped us to alter our speed and in turn reduce the wait time. As we neared Mysore we were instructed by G2 to take the bypass and wait at a specific landmark, so that they can come and join, but we somehow missed the bypass (thanks to Dinesh.Rc our Designated Navigator for not noticing the big bypass sign) and went straight into the city, since none of us knew the local language it took us a while before we figured out how to get to the correct route, and this act of ours facilitated G2 to reach our mutually agreed meeting point ahead of us, despite starting late.
Finally, we met G2 at our mutually agreed meeting point; all of us greeted each other briefly and then started driving towards Nagarhole. My brother having been to Nagarhole once, was familiar with the directions, so he spearheaded the proceedings. We drove briefly before deciding to stop for lunch at Hunsur, having had a awful breakfast we half expected the lunch to be good, if not great. The food was tasty and stood up to our expectations and everyone enjoyed it. We then started with the rest our journey; within an hour of starting we ran into a closed check post, which was later identified as the gateway to Nagarhole Wild life sanctuary. We logged our cars registration numbers and some additional details in the log book that was handed over to us by the guard on duty, after completing the formalities the check post was opened, we then proceeded further into the reserved forest area, as we ascended everyone in the car started lowering their windows, while Dinesh.Rc in the passenger seat reached out to switch off the music system and in no time everyone were in look out for animals. I was told by my brother at the check post that we have to drive for about 30 KM to reach the visitor center, where we will be collecting the keys for our prebooked rooms for our overnight stay. The road was full of pot holes, as one would expect amidst jungle, my brother had hard time maneuvering his car (Ford Ikon) through the potholes, I felt little better maneuvering mine, as mine handled better being small. We both managed to avert some potholes using our vast driving experiences (My brother 11+ years and mine 8+yrs), and kept driving, luck wasn't quite in our side during our 30 KM drive to the visitor center, as we didn't come across the ultimate animal, apart from some deer's and antelopes. I just mentioned the term 'The Ultimate Animal', which may puzzle some readers, when requested for clues then here are some, the top predator in the animal food chain, the one animal which keeps the other animals inflation under control, the animal that occupies the top position in animal kingdom, yes! "The Tiger" it is. Hope you all know that Nagarhole is a Tiger reserve and as per the census it is said to house 70 tigers and our mission was to see at least one.
We reached the visitor center around 3.00 PM, my brother and dinesh went in to get our accommodation finalized and to gather information about the evening jungle ride, while others were out roaming in the parking lot taking pictures and chatting. Almost after 30 Minutes they both came out with the keys to the dormitory, the dorm was uphill, couple of hundred yards from the visitor center. My brother told us that, we just have 25 Minutes to get to the dorm, unload things, freshen up and get back to the visitor center to board the van that leaves at 4.00PM for the jungle ride. Having this tight schedule behind us, we immediately started to the dorm, as soon as we reached there we were greeted by the dorm care taker, after helping us unpack, he asked us about the dinner and presented his menu, interestingly it didn't have any non-veg items in it, he offered us chappati, rice and vegetable curry. When we asked him to make chicken instead of vegetable curry, he said he can prepare it, but all the ingredients including chicken had to be brought by us from a near by village, as they don't have cold storage to stock chicken. After agreeing to his demands, we started out to the visitor center.
We were on time at the visitor center to board the van, which was scheduled to leave at 4.00 PM. Almost all of us had camera in our hands and we were all exited about the jungle ride and in high hopes to see the tiger, our expectations were heightened by my brother, when he told us about his visit last time and how lucky he was to see the tiger. We boarded the van one at a time and seated ourselves at the window seat, the driver of the van after making sure that everyone had boarded started the van, and he drove us through some internal routes which are not open for public vehicles. We were just 20 minutes into the drive before we came across a herd of elephants, they were grazing at a distance of about 400 meters and did not seem to have gotten disturbed by the sound of our van, which allowed us to stop, watch and take some nice pictures. since the distance between the van and the herd was quite substantial, one would need a camera with high zoom to capture it, three of us considered ourselves privileged at that instance as all three of us had cameras with 12x zoom, whereas our friend vatsa, who had a 3X zoom camera found it difficult capturing the herd. On seeing his pictures, one could barely confirm, that those were pictures of a herd. After taking some nice pictures we moved on further, hoping to see the tiger. We saw deer's, peacocks and some wild boars, since leaving the herd, but didn't quite have the luck to come across the biggie. Clock kept ticking and we almost came to the end of the ride with no luck of seeing the tiger, we all felt disappointed for not being able to see the tiger, but soon came out of it, after looking at the pictures of other animals, which included a solo shot of everyone in the trip, excluding mine :), that was taken during the ride. After chatting briefly about the ride, we headed to the nearby village to get chicken for the dinner; the village was about 10 KMs and on the way to the village we came across a check post and was told by the guard on duty that, the check post closes for traffic both ways at 6.00 PM sharp. We were shocked after hearing the guard as the clock showed 5.30 already, left with just 30 Minutes to get the required stuff and come back, we all discussed and came up with a contingency plan, the plan was, one group stays within the check post, while the other goes to get the required stuffs, in case if they don't make it on time then, the staying group can negotiate with the guard and get them in somehow. Everyone agreed to this and G2 volunteered to leave to the village. We all sat tight in the car with our fingers crossed, hoping for the best to happen. Almost all of us who stayed felt kind of tensed during this ordeal, except one, it was none other than vatsa, who was enjoying a telephone call that he received from a girl whom he met in the Internet, his loud laughs and his attitude of not wanting to be a part of that moment boiled our blood, he finally hung up after badri intervened and threatened him with his life :). When all these were happening some of us were in look out for G2 and around 5.55 PM our hopes were fulfilled, as G2 were able to make it back within the stipulated time. We all felt totally relaxed after that and started heading back to the dorm, as soon as we reached the dorm, we wasted no time in handing over the stuffs to the care taker and giving him a go ahead for dinner preparations. He told us that the dinner will be ready in about an hour.
The dormitory that was allocated to us had a big long room (50X20) had two rows of cots 7 in each side separated by walking space, roughly 2 feet wide and had a wooden door in the rear end, past the wooden door appeared 2 bathrooms followed by 2 toilets. We all helped each other unpack and began to pick the best available cot to sleep, as some were kind of moist. After settling down, some of us began to explore the surroundings, while dinesh and my brother were busy planning for the day ahead. It began to get dark and around 7.00 PM it became pitch-dark outside, to demonstrate the intensity of the darkness that exists in jungle to the new comers (first time stay in forest), I switched off the only light outside the dorm overseeing the front door, and made badri to open the door and stretch his hand outside, when he did that he couldn't see the remaining stretched part of his hand, he was shocked and frightened a bit. My brother being an avid forester (I ain't sure if this is the correct word to describe him) always carries a big search light with him, especially on a trip like this; on this occasion too, he had it with him, so we used it to drive away the darkness outside for a while, and to search if there were any animals wandering close to our dorm. Our search light picked up close to two dozen sparkling eyes, which really exited the new comers, but some of us knew for sure that those were the eyes of deer's and antelopes that often settle down at night and nothing else, which was confirmed once we narrowed it down to just one pair of eyes to reveal its identity as deer.
The bell rang signalling 8.30 PM, in the clock and in our stomach; Dinesh went to check, if the dinner was ready, and came in with an unpleasant news, he told us that there was a problem of some kind, so it may take another 15-20 minutes for the dinner to be ready. We all expressed our frustrations and decided to wait. After a long wait for almost an hour, which included Dinesh going back and forth for more than couple of times, not to the toilet :), but to the kitchen , the dinner was finally ready. The dinner table had enough plates, a big vessel full of chicken curry, a big vessel of rice, a vessel of vegetable curry and a casserole of chapattis. Some started with chappatis and some with rice, the ones who started with chapattis were adjudged the lucky ones in the end, because when dinner started whoever started with chapattis inadvertently ate more than 2, as no one counted the number of chapatti's in offer upfront, and only during the course of the meal everyone noticed that chapatti's were offered in limited counts, strictly 2 each. Before everyone could realize this, some were left with just one or even none. We were in no mood at the juncture to fight with the cook over the count of chapatti's that was offered. In the end I was the lucky one, for having 4 chapattis and Arun I believe was the unlucky one for having none. After dinner we briefly walked outside in the open, chatted for sometime, cracked jokes at each other and finally hit the bed around 11.00PM. After everyone tucked themselves in, when observed keenly, one could hear the sounds of small insects, deer calls and other sounds specific to jungle.
Till now, I didn't get a chance to see a tiger in the wild, but i know for sure that the stature of this animal cannot be explained in words and i hope i get a chance to see one in near future.
P.S.
The writer of this subject Ramesh (thats me!) has been completely overwhelmed with the content, so against his initial plan of writing the entire trip in one shot, has been shot in the head. please wait for Day 2,which is currently in pooja stage.
you may come across mistakes of many kinds, but be kind when commenting.
see you again on Day 2.
