Kabini, day 2

The schedule at Kabini was pretty brutal for the kids (well ... and for me, too). At 5:45 every morning, we got a wake-up call, which consisted of a staff member pounding on our door.

"Tea and coffee at the Golghar!" he'd say brightly when I poked my disheveled head out the door. Translation: "If you aren't sitting in the jeep in 20 minutes we will leave without you."

So up we jumped, threw on clothes, made everyone go to the bathroom, stuffed some biscuits and water bottles in a bag and headed out to the jeeps. The park is closed to traffic between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. (because, you know, wild animals), and since the animals hide and sleep during the hot part of the day the safari drives are early in the morning and in the evening.

Our first morning drive was fantastic. We had a really great spotter who was very knowledgeable, a clear nature-lover, and good with the kids. It didn't hurt that his English was perfect. (Some of our other spotters struggled with English.)

It was a misty morning, which made for a gorgeous drive but pretty lousy photos. You'll just have to trust me that these photos don't begin to do our experience justice.

Almost as soon as we entered the park, our spotter pointed out these tiger tracks along the side of the road.

in upper left

It was a young tiger headed in the opposite direction to where we were going. The Indian government requires safari jeeps to follow specific routes, so you can't follow the tracks unless they're headed in your direction. One of our later spotters was very frustrated by this rule. Anyway, there was a young tiger just walking down the road that morning. No big deal.

Shortly after we saw the tracks, this tusker (lone male elephant) took a break from his breakfast to check us out.

Our spotter said this elephant is one of the more fearless in the area and will often hang out by the main road that cuts through the reserve. I thought it was cool that he recognized individual elephants and even had names for some. He did that a few times on the drive, saying something like "Oh, that's the elephant I saw swimming across the river yesterday." Did you know that elephants are great swimmers? I didn't know that.

As we got closer to the elephant camp we saw some of the domesticated elephants wandering around. Our spotter said that this one works for the forest service. Rangers will ride the elephants if they need to get to remote areas of the park. Tigers don't attack healthy adult elephants, so I guess it's safe transportation.

Here's Samuel watching a herd of gaur. Samuel was so good on these safaris! He fell asleep for about an hour on three of the drives, but that's no surprise considering the crazy schedule. When he was awake, he whispered (I didn't even know he could do that) so as not to scare away any animals and watched everything with rapt attention.

Another wild boar prancing through the mist.

Johnny was just beside himself with excitement the whole time. Can you tell? In this photo you can also see that the gaur have beautiful tri-colored horns.

That's our spotter sitting next to Johnny. I wish I could remember his name. He was really great.

There's a lot of valuable wood in the forest, and the forest service struggles just as much with illegal logging as it does with poaching. This is a not-so-great shot of a teak grove we drove through. It was one of the most beautiful spots in the forest.

If you look closely you'll see an elephant in the mist across the river. Again, it doesn't look like much in a photo, but seeing this is one of the most tranquil, beautiful experiences I've had.

More sambar

We saw quite a few birds on this drive, including this woodpecker. The noise of its pecking was really loud and sort of echoed through the forest.

Another bird we saw a lot of, but never caught in a photo, had gorgeous blue feathers that you could only see when it was in flight. There were also kingfishers and jungle fowl all over the place. Lots of peacocks, too.

After the morning drive everyone headed back to the lodge for breakfast. Then we did a little exploring.

Just groovin' in the sandalwood ... er ... groove.

Lunch was back at the Golghar. I'm not sure why the outdoor eating area is called the Golghar. Maybe it's named for this famous 18th century granary? John came out of the restroom to find that the sink was already in use.

After lunch we tried to get the kids to take a nap. Ha! Instead they pretended they were tigers and that all the pillows in our cottage were tasty deer. I wish I'd caught a photo of Evie dragging pillows into the corner with her teeth.

"Oh! This is my favorite kind of deer! Let's eat it for lunch! Roaaaar! Yum! Crunch!"

Then, of course, they had to have tiger fights. It was a raucous, roaring, wrestling match. Very restful.

At 3:30 it was time to head back out on safari, this time by boat. Unfortunately, we got grouped with a rowdy bunch from Bangalore, and our guide was too busy trying to keep them in line to do much more than wave a hand at the shore and yell "elephants! crocodile!" etc.

The scenery was spectacular, though. We saw the elephants and crocodiles up close and personal. We even saw some elephants swimming and a couple of tuskers fighting just off shore.

Sadly, this is when our camera's battery died, so from here on out all the photos were taken with John's Blackberry. Top of wish list: decent camera!

Here's Samuel on the boat. I think this was his least favorite of the safaris, partly because our fellow passengers were often more interested in him than they were in the wildlife. Samuel's starting to be annoyed by the amount of attention he gets here.

We saw tons of elephants along the shore.

Enormous crocodile! At this point our guide/boat driver was yelling, "Balance! Remember balance!" because everyone was rushing to one side of the boat to get a picture of this monster. Everyone obeyed quickly. No one wanted to capsize 20 feet away from the crocodile.

Here he is getting ready to slide into the water, which he (she?) did without a sound or a ripple. Talk about menacing ...

Here's another crocodile going for a stroll. I had never seen a crocodile on the move like this. It was surprisingly graceful and looked like I imagine a dinosaur would. Creepy, though.

Here's an elephant walking along the shore. We were a lot closer to everything than it appears in these photos.

We headed back to the lodge as the sun was setting.

I included this one of Johnny because of the great sunset behind him, but also because he's holding his notebook. Johnny is such a nerd! I love it! During our explorations earlier in the day, he found a book about Indian reptiles at the reception area and asked if he could borrow it. He studied the book and then made a list of animals to look for on our drives. For the rest of our stay, he dutifully checked off the animals on the list and expanded it to include anything new. Evie took a notebook on one drive and drew pictures of all the animals she saw. I love my kids!

Here's the family (minus photographer John) after the boat ride.

After the evening safaris, there was a wildlife film and then dinner at 8:30. Evie and Samuel only made it to dinner on our first night. The early mornings had them crashing right after our evening safaris, so we just fed them a snack and let them sleep. A missed dinner is better than a missed morning ride through the park!

One last shot of sunset, day 2.

Coming up: Evie starts a war with the macaques! We almost see a tiger! And a leopard! Stay tuned.

All shook up

Never a dull day in Chennai!

You've probably heard that there was an earthquake off the coast of Indonesia yesterday afternoon. It was an 8.6 on the scale, which puts it in the top ten range of worst earthquakes recorded, and we felt it here in Chennai. People were asking me how close we are to the epicenter, so I found this map to show that.

shamelessly stolen from India Today

Those of you who have been through earthquakes know what a strange sensation it is. It took my mind a moment to understand that the supposedly solid earth was moving, so for the first few seconds I was thinking muscle spasms? dizzy spell? gas explosion? house about to collapse? and that sort of thing. Once I realized that it was an earthquake, the first thing that came to mind had little to do with earth and everything to do with water: tsunami.

Chennai takes the tsunami threat very seriously, as memories of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami are fresh. An estimated 18,000 Indians died in that disaster, most of them in our state of Tamil Nadu. Earthquakes in the Indian Ocean (especially near Indonesia) aren't uncommon, but the 2004 tsunami took everyone by surprise. It was mind-bogglingly huge, and tsunamis in this region are rare enough that there wasn't a warning system in place.

Chennai's Marina Beach after the 2004 tsunami/photo by AFP

Remains of one of Chennai's many fishing villages after the 2004 tsunami/photo by AP

No one wants a repeat of that. Immediately after yesterday's earthquake, police were down on Chennai's beaches with megaphones asking everyone to leave, and fishing villages were evacuated. Our family got text messages, e-mails and a phone call from the Consulate warning us to stay away from the coast and to start conserving water, food and gas.

The next three hours were pretty tense. Our house is about 3 km from the beach and is considered to be in a safe zone, so I wasn't worried about our immediate safety. The worry was getting Johnny home from school and John from the Consulate in the time before a possible tsunami would hit. The school is in a safe zone, but you have to cross lower-lying areas to get there from here, so I didn't want him stranded there while the rest of us were at home.

The school canceled after-school activities and kept kids in their classrooms until they were released by a parent, though Johnny and the other Consulate kids were brought home on the regular Consulate bus. (We're the only ones who have busing.) Any families who live along the ECR (East Coast Road that runs along the beach) were encouraged to stay and use the school as a safe haven. Many families did stay at the school until the warnings were lifted later in the evening.

With everyone trying to leave work or school and get into a safe zone, traffic was unreal. I did a lot of pacing, let me tell you. It kept getting later and later, and Johnny wasn't home yet. The bus monitor sent us texts to let us know that the kids were safe and that they were just held up in traffic, but I didn't really relax until Johnny walked through the door full of stories about all the excitement.

Consulate officers were released early, so John got home before 5, too. (That was about the time a tsunami would have reached us.) Once everyone was safe at home it was just a matter of waiting things out.

Warnings were eased later in the evening, though we were told to remain cautious. No tsunami this time. The Hindu has a nice little article about why this quake didn't cause a tsunami, even though its location and magnitude were so similar to those of the 2004 earthquake.

As I say, never a dull day.

Kabini, day 1

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?

Those are langurs in the fuzzy background.

We saw two kinds of monkeys all over the place: the common macaque, or temple monkey, and these black-faced langurs.

These ones are nibbling on bamboo roots.

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.

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.

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.

another gaur

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.