I think I mentioned that Samuel was a little miffed about being carried away from Mysore's rail musem. I'm happy to say that things calmed down quickly once we broke out the Oreos and started the drive to Kabini River Lodge.
Kabini is 80 km from Mysore (about 50 miles), but it took two hours to get there. A good third of that time was spent on the last 12 km, which was driven on road in name only. I seriously think they should just forget about pavement and go back to dirt roads. It's hard to imagine much worse than what we bumped and bounced over. Aside from the neverending "are we there yet"-type questions, the kids did great on the drive.
The scenery was beautiful. We drove through farmland and villages mostly, the farms green with banana and coconut groves, rice paddies and sugar cane. We learned at the lodge that most of India's rural areas are cultivated, meaning that there's very little wild land outside of the national parks. Remember: 1.2 billion people.
The Kabini River Lodge is right on the backwaters of the Kabini River and just south of Nagarhole National Park (and here). It used to be part of the Maharaja of Mysore's private hunting reserve, and as a nod to that, the first thing you see when you walk into reception is a huge stuffed tiger. I wish I had a photo of the kids standing there enthralled. "Is it real?" "Who killed it?" "Why does it have glass eyes?" "Are all tigers that big?" "Can tigers get into the camp?" etc.
We arrived just in time to get our bags into our cottage (on the banks of the river, with a fence separating us from rogue crocodiles) and head to lunch. All of the meals were served buffet style at an outdoor eating area, and we were under constant monkey observation. More on that later. The kids loved picking their own bananas from a huge bunch that was hanging at the end of the buffet line.
Later in the afternoon, we went on our first safari drive. Woot! We hopped in the back of an open jeep, along with a family from Bangalore and a "spotter," and went bumping and bouncing down the road to the park.
The rules: Be quiet. Don't litter. Don't wear bright colors. Don't try to feed any animals. Don't try to take anything out of the park as a souvenir. Always do exactly as your guide says. DO NOT GET OUT OF THE VEHICLE!
John and I fully expected to have to take turns accompanying Johnny on our scheduled safaris (five drives and one boat ride), while the unlucky partner had to stay back at the lodge with the younger two. I mean, they lasted two and a half to three hours. Believe it or not, all three kids happily went on all six safaris! They loved it! Even Samuel.
Here are some photos from our first drive, which turned out to be a good preview of the kind of animals we'd be seeing throughout our stay. We learned on this trip that if we're going to go to awesome places like Kabini, we really need to get a decent camera. Ours just wasn't cutting it, though I don't know what camera could truly capture the forest experience.
Nagarhole National Park is also known as Rajiv Gandhi National Park, named for the Indian prime minister who was assassinated by the Tamil Tigers in 1991.
Do any of these kids look excited?
We saw two kinds of monkeys all over the place: the common macaque, or temple monkey, and these black-faced langurs.
I'll end the suspense right now and tell you that we never saw a tiger, but we saw and heard plenty of evidence that they were wandering around.
The part of the park we were in has an elephant camp, where domesticated elephants come for a month or two of "vacation" from their regular lives. Some of the elephants are temple elephants (like Lakshmi, the elephant we met in Pondicherry), others work in the logging industry or for the forest service, and others are used in Mysore's Dasara processions. I think some of the elephants at this camp live there all year. The bell around the neck and the untethered chain on the foot are meant to make the elephants easy to track if they get lost in the forest.
And here's our first glimpse of a wild elephant. Don't worry, we had much better views later. But this was the first, so it was very exciting.
We saw quite a few gaur, which looks a bit like a water buffalo. It isn't so obvious in the photos, but these things are huge. One of our guides ranks it as the most dangerous animal in the forest, because it will frequently charge unprovoked. They've actually been known to kill tigers.
There were tons of peacocks and peahens strutting around. We occasionally saw them up in trees, too.
More langurs hanging around one of the park's service roads.
The animal we saw most was definitely the chital, or spotted deer. They're gorgeous animals, but I have to admit that my feelings about them changed over time. At first I was content to sit quietly and admire. After a few drives without seeing any tigers, though, I felt the urge to start singing "Here, tiger, tiger! Come get the nice fresh deer! Yummy!"
These sambar deer are a little more elusive. We also saw barking deer a couple of times (alas, no photo), which are supposed to be very rare.
This isn't a great photo, but it's of one of Johnny's favorite animals, the wild boar (along with more chital). These things were hilarious to watch, because they're so dang ugly but they prance around as if they're on fairy feet.
This photo doesn't look like much, but it probably captures my favorite safari moment. It was an elephant walking along the bank across the river from us. We saw this one on our first evening drive, and then we saw a similar scene the next morning. It was just beautiful! The elephant was far away, so we didn't hear anything. We just saw this graceful, majestic, enormous creature moving along the river bank.
That was our last sighting of the night. The national park doesn't allow any vehicles inside the boundaries between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., so we had to head back to the lodge. Here's a shot of the road home.
And here's the sunset from the beach in front of our cottage.
The view from our balcony:
Samuel and Evie admiring the view while we wait to go to dinner.
Coming up: Misty mornings! Gigantic crocodiles! Stay tuned.
Kabini is 80 km from Mysore (about 50 miles), but it took two hours to get there. A good third of that time was spent on the last 12 km, which was driven on road in name only. I seriously think they should just forget about pavement and go back to dirt roads. It's hard to imagine much worse than what we bumped and bounced over. Aside from the neverending "are we there yet"-type questions, the kids did great on the drive.
The scenery was beautiful. We drove through farmland and villages mostly, the farms green with banana and coconut groves, rice paddies and sugar cane. We learned at the lodge that most of India's rural areas are cultivated, meaning that there's very little wild land outside of the national parks. Remember: 1.2 billion people.
The Kabini River Lodge is right on the backwaters of the Kabini River and just south of Nagarhole National Park (and here). It used to be part of the Maharaja of Mysore's private hunting reserve, and as a nod to that, the first thing you see when you walk into reception is a huge stuffed tiger. I wish I had a photo of the kids standing there enthralled. "Is it real?" "Who killed it?" "Why does it have glass eyes?" "Are all tigers that big?" "Can tigers get into the camp?" etc.
We arrived just in time to get our bags into our cottage (on the banks of the river, with a fence separating us from rogue crocodiles) and head to lunch. All of the meals were served buffet style at an outdoor eating area, and we were under constant monkey observation. More on that later. The kids loved picking their own bananas from a huge bunch that was hanging at the end of the buffet line.
Later in the afternoon, we went on our first safari drive. Woot! We hopped in the back of an open jeep, along with a family from Bangalore and a "spotter," and went bumping and bouncing down the road to the park.
The rules: Be quiet. Don't litter. Don't wear bright colors. Don't try to feed any animals. Don't try to take anything out of the park as a souvenir. Always do exactly as your guide says. DO NOT GET OUT OF THE VEHICLE!
John and I fully expected to have to take turns accompanying Johnny on our scheduled safaris (five drives and one boat ride), while the unlucky partner had to stay back at the lodge with the younger two. I mean, they lasted two and a half to three hours. Believe it or not, all three kids happily went on all six safaris! They loved it! Even Samuel.
Here are some photos from our first drive, which turned out to be a good preview of the kind of animals we'd be seeing throughout our stay. We learned on this trip that if we're going to go to awesome places like Kabini, we really need to get a decent camera. Ours just wasn't cutting it, though I don't know what camera could truly capture the forest experience.
Nagarhole National Park is also known as Rajiv Gandhi National Park, named for the Indian prime minister who was assassinated by the Tamil Tigers in 1991.
Do any of these kids look excited?
 |
| Those are langurs in the fuzzy background. |
 |
| These ones are nibbling on bamboo roots. |
 |
| Recent tiger kill. It's likely a tiger's kill because the other large predator in this area is the leopard, which hauls its kills up trees for safe keeping. |
And here's our first glimpse of a wild elephant. Don't worry, we had much better views later. But this was the first, so it was very exciting.
We saw quite a few gaur, which looks a bit like a water buffalo. It isn't so obvious in the photos, but these things are huge. One of our guides ranks it as the most dangerous animal in the forest, because it will frequently charge unprovoked. They've actually been known to kill tigers.
There were tons of peacocks and peahens strutting around. We occasionally saw them up in trees, too.
More langurs hanging around one of the park's service roads.
The animal we saw most was definitely the chital, or spotted deer. They're gorgeous animals, but I have to admit that my feelings about them changed over time. At first I was content to sit quietly and admire. After a few drives without seeing any tigers, though, I felt the urge to start singing "Here, tiger, tiger! Come get the nice fresh deer! Yummy!"
These sambar deer are a little more elusive. We also saw barking deer a couple of times (alas, no photo), which are supposed to be very rare.
This isn't a great photo, but it's of one of Johnny's favorite animals, the wild boar (along with more chital). These things were hilarious to watch, because they're so dang ugly but they prance around as if they're on fairy feet.
 |
| another gaur |
That was our last sighting of the night. The national park doesn't allow any vehicles inside the boundaries between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., so we had to head back to the lodge. Here's a shot of the road home.
And here's the sunset from the beach in front of our cottage.
The view from our balcony:
Samuel and Evie admiring the view while we wait to go to dinner.
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