The Jungle Get-away

One of the many things I absolutely love about Bangalore is its proximity to some of the great travel destinations - most of them being just few hours' drive away. One such place is the Nagarhole National Park. So Colin & Vandana planned a trip to the national park along with a stay at this wonderful place called King's Sanctuary as a birthday gift for me (can I be any luckier than this?? :) ). The traffic on Bangalore-Mysore highway was insane on Saturday morning even if we started quite early, mostly so as it was a long weekend. We made a short 2-hour break at Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary on the way. We spotted many bird species like - White Ibis, Open Billed Storks, Egrets, bats and of course many crocodiles lying about lazily.

 About couple of hours' drive away from the bird sanctuary was our destination - King's Sanctuary; nestled almost a stone's throw away from the entrance of the national park. The resort is very tastefully done - sprawling premises with a rustic touch and some very unusual flora & fauna. The suite we had booked was a spacious 2-bedroom and a living room unit. The best part of it was the bathroom which opened into a room with bathtub and had an open roof!! The resort also offered many recreational activities of which we indulged in cycling, few games of croquet, tree-climbing using a rope & harness (I think they called it jumaneering or something; which only Colin managed to do, rest of us couldn't even get our feet off the ground!), a tribal song and dance show and children's games around the bonfire. Being my birthday, I also got to cut the very delicious cake (on the house!) in the midst of this all and got wished by dozens of other guests gathered at the bonfire :).

We woke up at 5 AM the next day to head for the jungle safari starting at 6 AM in an open gypsy. The cool morning breeze and the sounds of the jungle made us forget about our drowsiness (and last night's hangover too :) ) soon. The animals we saw were herds of spotted deer (chital), four-horned antelope, wild boar, peacock, wild hens, elephant, giant Malabar squirrels, Brahminy Kites and tortoise. There was a family of five wild boars (two adults and 3 kids) who, on spotting us, fled away instantly. Except that the 3 kids kept stopping and looking at us out of curiosity in spite of constant prodding by their parents to run away. Looks like animals aren't all that different from us humans, just a lot better. The closest we got to spotting a tiger was the pug-marks of a mother and its cub, the marks were just about few hours old as per our knowledgeable guide. One of the saddest sights I remember was seeing an antelope nibbling on (probably food inside) a poly-bag. The other being an elephant training camp which had about 5-6 elephants in huge chains being tamed by their mahouts :( . The guide told us that rest of the elephants have already been taken to train for participating in Mysore Dussehra festival.

We came back to the resort to a huge breakfast laid out for all guests (did I mention that the food there was excellent?). Another game of croquet and freshening up later, we were all set to hit the roads to head back to Bangalore braving the insane traffic - a sign that another vacation had come to an end ...