Weekend trip to Bandipur

After planning for many places and not finding availability in any of them, we thought of going to Bandipur for a day. The idea was to enjoy the nature since the forest will be green after pre-monsoon showers. This time of the year till the period of monsoon is not great for animal sightings (read predator sightings) since the forest will be green and they get camouflaged in them. Also, the water bodies will be available deep inside the forest as well thereby not requiring for them to come to boundaries of forest. Still we heard some sightings of the tigers and leopards during our stay there. We booked an accommodation with Jungle Lodges and the package included Stay, food and 2 safaris (one in the evening and the other in morning). Since the trip was finalized on Friday only, we did not have long time to plan and deliberate on the trip. Filled up the fuel to full tank on previous evening, had some office emails to send and finally hit the bed.

We started in morning by 6 AM on June 13, 2015 (Saturday). We took the NH 209 route through Kanakapura-Malavalli-Talakadu-T.Narasipura-Chamarajnagar-Gundlupet-Bandipur. NH 209 route is more scenic and has lesser traffic as compared to the route through Mysore. The downside is the two lane road without divider in between and lack of good eating outlets. I enjoy driving on the stretch between Kanakapura to T.Narasipura because of tree covered stretches and the Kaveri river alongside. The picture shows the stretch between Chamarajnagar and Gundlupet. We reached Bandipur JLR at 11:30 AM covering a distance of 221 Kms with 20 minutes break in between.

After having sumptuous lunch, we started for the safari around 3:15 PM. The forest was amazing, we got a chance to see animals in their natural habitat. We spotted deers, sambar deer, elephants with their younger ones, gaurs (largest cattle family), peacocks and birds like serpent eagle. The sight of predators eluded us, but the sightings of other animals, especially elephants made the day. At one point, the elephant was with her young one and on seeing us in their habitat, she gave a charge at us to our jeep. We had hearts in our mouth for that minute, but luckily the elephant backed off immediately. JLR safari took us deep inside the jungle and the safari lasted about 2.5 hours.

The next morning safari was little uneventful. We had sightings of wood pecker, giant Malabar squirrel and gaurs. Animal sightings in evening safari was better for us than morning safari. Bandipur forest is part of Nilgiris bioreserve and is spread over 880 square Kilometers out of the total ~2100 square kilometers of Nilgiris bio reserve. The other areas are Mudumalai in Tamil Nadu, Wayanad in Kerala and Nagarhole in Karnataka. The water bodies in the forest with the backdrop of Nilgiris were beautiful and will be in our memories for long time.

 

We checked out of the resort at 10:45 AM and we made the return journey through Mysore route (NH 212 and SH 33) through Gundlupet-Nanjangud-Mysore-Srirangapatna-Mandya-Maddur-Channapatna-Ramanagara-Bangalore. Distance wise it is almost the same as the route we took while going, but the road laying out/widening work between Gundlupet and Nanjangud has left the roads in tatters and brings down the average speed. Reached Bangalore back at 5:15 PM after navigating through Sunday evening Bangalore traffic. It was an enjoyable trip with much needed break from monotony of city life (though it was just for a day). After thoughts of the trip: Forests and its flaura and fauna are something we need to preserve, the smell of the fresh air and silence in the forest are something I enjoyed the most. Unfortunately, we cannot store that air and bring it to our city life. All I could do was to fill up lungs full of fresh air in my 5 hours of visit inside jungle.