Dear All,
We started on this jungle sojourn with the idea of covering three forests Bandipur, Madumalai and Nagarhole. 30th June-2nd July.
Started at 8:30 am and made a first night halt at Mandya in a hotel, early morning day started for Bandipur, bypassed Banglore and Mysore through the outer ring road.
Reached Bandipur then Madumalai, did some roadside photography and at Masinagudi we learnt that three massive tuskers were frequenting the backwaters of the Masinagudi dam at late evening, we decided to try our luck, though we could hear the loud crackling and breaking of bamboo in this thick bamboo forest, the sounds were fading and getting away from us which was an indication that the tuskers were moving away from us and may have decided to come to the water much later, failing light made us abandon the wait.
Headed to Ooty after a quick late evening snack and reached there at around 9pm, a quick dinner and bed was necessary for us, as we were to start next day from Ooty- Nagarhole next morning at 7:00 am, which we did only to come back, as were descending from Ooty 22 kms down our brakes went limp, so we decided to do inclines rather than slopes on a 20% effective and 80% dead brake ratio and headed back to Ooty and got the master cylinder kit changed and again started at 3 pm to Nagarhole.
Reached the forest guest house by 8:30, only to be encountered by a huge wild tusker who was busy trying to fell a tree just beside the our bunglow, could not photograph it as the camera flash could trigger a unpredictable response which could possibly be doom for all of us within seconds, it took us and the bunglow caretaker 20 minutes to climb one flight of stairs to reach our bedroom, only after the tusker vanished into the dark forest, then at around 9pm, another quick dinner and bed, for the next day was a early one, from dawn to dusk (6am-6pm) we were in the forest with no lunch, only a flask of tea and other liquids.
Here we sighted and photographed many species with the exception of the tiger and Panther, our chances at Machan #1 were ruined as the drizzle continued from light to heavy all day through, which means the tiger would not visit the waterhole during day as the chill was enough not to make it feel thirsty.(for this we will be back in April-May next year)
The Sambar stag and Gaur mother and calf are shot from Machan #2.
The jungle was lush green, which gives the animals good cover, which is bad for sighting and photography and to think about it the rains just started in the south due to the delayed monsoons.
Headed back to our forest bunglow and proceeded to Coorg side for a late relaxed, non-veg dinner (we deserved it) next day we were out of Nagarhole.
As we proceeded towards Hyderabad, stopped by a bird sanctuary before Srirangapatnam and did some good photography there, night halt at Annantapur and back to Hyderabad by Sunday 2:30pm covering 1800 kms.
The team included Abbas, Devidas, Dr. Venkat and myself.
There are many photographs I would like to share with you guys on the forum, so I have divided them into different categories:
Random
Land and Jungle scapes
Animals
Avians
The pics in first post without text:
Hyderabad-Banglore highway.
A magnificent church in Mysore.
Arnold the scarecrow.
Sunflowers and Coconuts.
The BRAKEDOWN.
Ooty-Madumalai road.
Into Nagarhole.
Our forest bunglow.
View from our bedroom.
(The thick tree on the extreme left was the tuskers toy last night)
Three of the four member team.
Last edited by khan_sultan : 10th July 2009 at 16:56.
Reason: all bold
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