BR Hills

Hmm...another travelogue transpires from this brilliant mind of mine.

The home at Mysore and the residing tenant, the general job scene and other common thoughts revolved around our discussion the previous wednesday night which stretched my waking hours into almost midnight. A six+ hour drive meant that we start atleast by 5:30 next morning from Bangalore which meant, I start atleast by 4:45 from home which meant that I wake up atleast by 4 in the morning; which I did with some aid by the decrepit alarm piece from Titan and promptly left home by 4:45 with dreary eyes even after the hot bath. A few kms into the drive, I realised that I have forgotten the reservation charts given by Jungle lodges. I had to turn back lest we being refused admission into our reserved tents at BR hills. Now, lemme narrate a funny incident which occurred while driving down to Ranga's place. Somewhere around Rajajinagar, a vibhuthi clad man asked me for a lift (without hiking up his pant or anything of that sort!) and me being the perpetual philanthropist, obliged him with a smile. He never said where he was headed, but latched on generally and I didn't bother as long as I don't have to take a detour. A few minutes later, he volunteered to be dropped on Magadi road. But when we neared his quoted destination, he wanted to be dropped near the Vijaynagar circle. I didn't comment and drove on and when his second destination neared, he quoted a third one, Mysore road junction! Since this new destination was also on my way, I drove on silently. When we neared mysore road, he asked me, which side I was headed and when I answered Girinagar, he was willing to ride with me till there! But now, he expected that I would take the ring road to Girinagar and not the side road just next to the mysore road junction. He even tried persuading me that, his was a shorter option (now, that Dijsktra is dead, everyone claims to improve on the shortest path algorithm!). But I was adamant and carried on till Girinagar main road with him sitting behind. He finally asked to be dropped off and ended up walking till the ring road from there. I was laughing my guts off when I saw him walking and losing all that he had gained while hanging on from Magadi road till mysore road junction. I mean, he was so near to his intended destination while we were at that junction and salpa athi aase patti, ended up walking a lot more. Rather than wanting to know where I was headed, if he had just quoted where he was headed, I could have imparted my infinite wisdom on
the shortest path algorithm atleast!! :-)

Anyways, it was around 5:45 when I reached Ranga's home and by then they were promptly loaded and waiting. Cantry started as the driver and continued almost till the end though I didn't remember who drove later! The journey was mainly filled with discussions about company policies and how we could improve them, Indian politics, Indian cricket etc which promptly put Srivatsa(ranga's brother) to sleep almost immediately. The only incident midway was some rattling noise from the car. On investigation, the source was revealed as a huge piece of barbed wire embedded into one of the rear tyres which was rattling against the car's body. But there was no puncture strangely and the wire had managed to only embed the tyre and hadn't pierced
the inner tube. By about 8 a.m, we were in Mysore and decided to have breakfast at one of the princely hotels viz., 'Hotel Mylari'. This popular joint has been in action since the days of the maharaja and is famous for it's Dosas priced at 10/- each. You get only one type of dosas here and the concept is unique in the sense that you are served dosas one after the other on the same plate! 126/- was the bill and you can imagine how much we ate between the four of us! By 10, we were on the road again towards the hills. The road was through nanjangud, Chamarajanagar, BR hills and not really bad atleast till the foot hills. It was a 20 kms climb from the foothill till the resort which took us nearly an hour. Animal sighting were literally nil during this 20 kms drive and we sort of extrapolated this to expect nothing more than the odd wild boar or herd of deer at the sanctuary, only to be horribly proved wrong the next day.
We were the first folks to arrive at the resort at 12:30 in the afternoon which gave us the option to choose the best available accommodation. Actually all types of accommodation are priced equal at 1200/- per person per night which includes full meals, beedi and benkipatnas. We opted tents which were quite posh with carpeted floors(or was it tiled?), curtains, toilets with hindware and Jaguar fittings etc. The activities included a jeep safari in the evening, a choice between a trek and a jeep safari in the morning, an elephant ride after that and video shows when time permitted. The fare was all inclusive and once you make the payment at Bangalore, nothing more needs to be paid other than tips. So, from the time we reached till 4:30 in the evening, which was the scheduled time for the safari, all we had to do was have lunch! Lunch was simple but tasty with a spread which included non-veg too. Srivatsa and me chose to observe the tame elephants (which weren't tied) after lunch while the others chose to grab an afternoon siesta. We were all set and ready and the jeeps with their drivers were waiting too by the scheduled
time . A chap called Kumar who obviously knew a lot about the jungle was our driver and the inmates of the jeep included a doctor who was serving at the public health centre for the Soliga tribals and a 'dhanin' doc who was on vacation probably. The first few minutes were pretty boring and it even started to drizzle. The usual animals like boars, an odd bison, herd of all kinds of deer were seen loitering about which hardly interested us.

And then the fun started...

We neared a pond and kumar stopped the jeep close by since he spotted a herd of elephants a few metres away. The herd which comprised of an adult female and 2 siblings sauntered into the pond trumpetting along cheerfully. That was the first time I had heard a wild tusker trumpet from such a close distance! The next 20 minutes were more like
watching a movie on the national geographic with the elephants walloping in the muddy pool. The youngest was a really small one and sometimes he simply went totally underwater with just his trunk above water for breathing. And all I could was stand and clap there since I had forgotten my camera at the tent itself! To top it, cantry didn't find it necessary to bring his along too and I felt quite miserable out there since any snapshot in those 20 minutes could have easily won a prize in any amateur photography competition. The elephants then moved out of the pool only to spray themselves with mud later. The dhanin doc volunteered his infinite wisdom that this act of the elephants was to protect themselves from the sun and the mud was to form a mud-pack on their bodies. If this was the best sight, more were to follow further into the safari! A few minutes later, a huge herd of bisons(or Indian Gaurs as sandy from wildcraft would have it) blocked our path! A solitary male bull was part of the herd and he was really really huge compared to the huge females. A few babies too were promptly hidden from view by the adults in the herd and almost all the adults were staring at us waiting for our next moveview. This sight would have fetched me a prize if not the elephants for sure. The closest gaur was just about 10 feet away from our jeep and kumar was constantly revving his engine just in case one in the herd decided we posed
a danger to her kids!
The manager, cook , caretaker, animal feeder, PR man etc at the resort was a cool chap called gangaswamy(notice the 'g' and not 'r') and no narration is complete without a reference to him! Sudhir Shivaram had already been to the hills enough times to be remembered by the locals(and animals?) there and we in turn had heard anough about Gangaswamy's exploits from him to form a fair mental picture. Solitude over long durations in a jungle though married, an almost tribal staff and all sorts of people for guests and you can imagine what would become of the manager! He simply wanted to talk and we with our bottles of liquor were ample company to his prattle. But ofcourse he does a decent PR job and kept his distance from us as long as other guests were around. After the encounter with the gaurs and elephants, we headed back to the tents to be greeted by warm pakodas and slightly colder coffee and tea. Next on the itinerary was a wild life movie show. A few minutes of it later we opted to drink the rest of the evening rather than watch lizards stealing eggs from a parrot's nest etc. Gangaswamy promised to join us later which he did. BaapaNNi's company had prompted Ranga to buy rather huge amounts of liquor and we later had to gift away more than what we consumed to Gangaswamy. Vodka with limecordial and sprite and Rum with coke were on the menu and Srivatsa and me chose the former. We limited ourselves to a single glass while Ranga and cantry settled for a long night. Gangaswamy joined us a few minutes later on the balcony of our tent where we had spread and the next hour could be termed as undiluted rustic humour, mostly below the belt types. It did have us rolling with laughter though; more for his narration style rather than the actual humour content! He was quite well-informed though and could talk about anything from Narayan murthy of Infosys fame to how elephants mate! Dinner was served promptly at 9 p.m at a place called the Gol-ghar; the same location where they served all meals. It was again a simple but tasty spread with gajar-ka-halwa for dessert. We met a couple of americans at our table and enjoyed talking to them; especially Ranga since they were almost from the same location he currently resides. This guy was into making films and traveled all over the world and it was fun listening to him describe his encounters with mountain Gorillas, african lions and people in India. He was fascinated by cowdung somehow! Tired as we were after the hectic day, we crashed onto our beds right after dinner. Ranga and his brother in one tent while cantry and me in the other. The next 6 hours passed without incident and the morning calls by the coffee vandor outside our tent awakened us giving us enough time to get ready for the trek.
We chose the trek over the jeep safari and never regretted that since we later heard from the crowd that opted for the safari that sightings were minimal! The trek was to a watch tower atop a neighbouring hill and was guided by prasad who worked under the title of a naturalist for jungle lodges. The trek was exhilarating and all of us enjoyed it though we were enveloped by a cloud of mist when we reached the tower. Prasad claimed that the view from there was something not worth missing and we felt deprived staring at the thick mist. Climbing down
was quite a task with the dew covering the track thus making it slippery. Me with my Teva slippers fell a million times and ranga with his shoe soles smoother than Hema malini's cheeks fell a million + one times! Hmm...I can keep on writing about every minor incident.....
But, to sum it up, we reached back home, had breakfast of omelettes, idli, vada, bread and what not, packed up and left for BR temple located 20 kms away. Ranga's long lost guru from school (vidyashala) lives in a self-made ashram here and we went to visit him. Home grown oranges and apples were offered to all of us which were grabbed immediately. We then visited the tribal development centre and bought honey for a deal....and started the drive back home to namma benglooru. Dinner at lokaruchi was the only incident worth mentioning on the drive back.

All this and guess what!...I still had the entire weekend to spend at bangalore!!!