bph: February 2014

Our friends from UK were visiting India, and we decided to go out on a trip. It was our 2nd visit to Kabini. We were 6 of us with 2 kids. We booked cottage/room/tents at the jungle lodge resort in Kabini for 3 days.

We left on a Saturday morning around 7 am. After a stop at Kamat Yatrinivas for a buffet breakfast, we reached Mysore around 10.30 am.With a brief stop in Mysore, we headed to Kabini. Reached the resort around 1.45 pm. Its a beautiful place, with the Kabini river flowing right by the resort. They have 4 types of accommodations - tents, rooms, cottages and maharaja cottages. All the cottages and tents are river facing. Tents were my favorites, as they are river facing, and they looked like toy houses :D They have a nice place outside the tent to sit. The highlights of a Kabini trip are always the safaris! We had lunch at the resort, and got ready for our first jeep safari which started at 3.30 pm.

Here we go..

We got into a 3 row seater jeep, and started the safari. It was very exciting, to be patient and look out for any sign of animals. We started off by seeing a beautiful peacock. We saw a lot of deer and langur. I LOVED to watch the deer. They are beautiful animals :) The way each deer used to look up when we passed them was adorable :) We saw lot of baby deer as well. The langurs kept jumping between trees and playing. We spotted a lone tusker elephant walking next to us along the road. We saw a crocodile sleeping on one of the river banks and a sambar was grazing about 20 feet away. Then all of a sudden the sambar started walking towards the crocodile, the crocodile moved a little. Since a crocodile always attacks from water, we thought that it will go inside the water and attack the sambar. But I guess the crocodile was full, so it did not attack the sambar. It was still amazing that the sambar stood so close to the crocodile. After a while, the sambar moved away. We saw all this from across the river. Reminded us of the "Battle of Krugar" video.

Crocodile and Sambar

We came across wild boar, mongoose and a single gaur. We saw a lot of birds - egrets, kites, kingfisher, peacocks, mynahs to name a few. In the anticipation of seeing a tiger or a leopard we didn't realize how the 3 hours went by. We used to go near the water, hoping to spot more animals, as they usually come to drink water.

Kingfisher

Gaur

We saw the sun set on our way back to the resort. We got back around 6.30pm. We sat on the kallu bench near the river and watched the sunset near the cottage. We had tea and snacks. It got dark by then. We sat in the sit out, had drinks and chatted. We had dinner, and continued our chat in the room.

View from the resort

We had to wake up early the next day, as the safari started at 6.15am. We got a wakeup call from the resort guy at 5.45am. Got ready quickly and headed out. It was cold and fresh, and we were all (including our lil one) excited and geared up to see more wild animals!

Wild boars were the first to be seen. The sun rays between the long trees were beautiful.

First rays of sun

And the moment came - our driver suddenly started driving fast, and we realized that he had spotted a tiger! We saw immediately on the side a tiger moving, we stopped the jeep right next to it, the tiger started moving away, but it turned and looked directly at us, and then turned slowly and walked and then went inside the bushes. It was amazing to see the tiger from such a close distance! The tiger was maybe 25-30 feet away and moved very slowly. In the excitement, we didn't remember to take many photos and were only able to take 2-3.

Our day was made by the sight of the tiger. We went to the other side to check if the same tiger would cross by, but it didn't. We saw malabar squirrels, many wild boars, egret, deer, lot of blue jay birds, kingfisher, sambar, mynah, langur and many more.

A picture perfect moment - 2 beautiful blue jay birds flying with the dry leaf trees brown/grey in color as the background.

And of course the tiger!

We returned from the safari ride around 9.30am. After a heavy breakfast at the resort, we relaxed near the river, on hammock/bench/mud, watching the birds fly by.

We went on a coracle ride in the river, it was a calm, nice ride :)

Bats on the tree

We got back to the tents, freshened up and chatted for a while outside. Cold beer in the hot sun was great. It was time for lunch, and at 3.30 we had the boat safari into the jungle. After having tea, we headed out on the boat safari. This was a different experience compared to the jeep safaris. We saw a looot of beautiful birds. River tern, eagret, painted beak --, eagle, bats, peacock, snake bird, mynah, kingfisher, blue jay to name a few. We also saw malabar squirrel, deer, sambar, wild boar and an elephant.

We were riding around on the boating looking hard for signs of tiger or leopard and trying to listen to the "CALL". Whenever a tiger is on the prowl, the smaller animals like deer, langur etc can sense it and so they show a sign. We approached one of the corners of the river, and stopped the boat waiting for a sign. A deer was drinking water from the river, and langurs were playing on the trees nearby. After a while, the deer became alert, and there was an eerie silence, the langur sounded its typical tiger call. We waited in silence hoping for the tiger to make its appearance. And the tiger came out in the open slowly towards the river. It drank water from the river, and then it looked up at us, drank some more water, and turned, and started walking away. It was amazing to see the tiger. This time around we saw the tiger for almost 2 minutes and were able to take some photos, but the tiger was a little far away - around 125-150 feet.

The sunset on our way back was beautiful. We got back around 6.30pm to the resort. Took few crazy funny pictures and had tea with pakodas near the tents.

Sunset from the resort

The 3rd day, woke up early for the 6.15 am jeep safari. Just being in the jungle felt so good. Fresh air, lot of trees and the only sound were of the birds chirping. It was very peaceful. The 3 hours safari was good, we saw lot of deer and langur, many gaurs, sambar, peacock, malabar squirrel and lot of birds.