Sunday, April 20, 2008

Treasured Forests

I had decided to drive over the weekend... got up on Saturday at 3.30am to leave early... however my day started with all the bang!!! from my mom with an array of complaints... any way i started my drive at around 5am, picked up 2 other friends for the trip.. i was surprised to see the traffic in the Mysore Bangalore highway so early in the morning.. it took quite some time before we reached Mysore... we decided to break here for breakfast and went to a hotel opposite Mysore zoo however it was very expensive is what we felt... a masala dosa for 25Rs was never in my thought especially in mysore... anyway it was not bad hence i didn't have much issues...

Things were lot more different from here, we were driving through lot more beautiful lands and lot more lesser traffic.. we reached HD Kote at around 10am. From here we decided to move towards gundre forest range near N.Beguru.. From here in order to get inside the forest we need to have permission from the forest office. One thing for shure its very difficult to get persmission from the forest department, we should get the permission from the forest department in bangalore near IISC. However my experience is you will not get permission that easily if you donot know anyone in the forest office.










With the help of some locals we did manage to get permission to get inside the forest, however we had an issue since an officer was visiting the place we just had around 2hr for the safari however later we managed to convince them that we can come back by around 5pm. So after a good lunch for 80rs for 5 people we went ahead with our forest ranger in a jeep inside the forest...










These forests are one of the best forests i have ever seen, first of all i was totally astonished to see the change in landscape from the beautiful farm lands to thick forests all of a sudden. And the best thing is the amount of wildlife you get to see here roaming in the wild.. This place is heaven for elephants,deer,tiger,wild buffalo,cheeta,bear and lots of birds... We managed to find lots of elephants,deers,wild buffalo... First thing i have decided after being to this place is i wanna walk in this forest and we have already made the arrangements for the same....











Its an amazing place to watch for the wildlife in the evening coming in 100s to the back waters of river kabini, the possibility of finding animals is very high during the summer.... however since we had to go back before 6 we didnot get the oppurtunity to wait and enjoy the scenic beauty over here....
It was a busy afternoon in jeep a bit scary to chase the elephants in the wild you never know when they are gonna turn back on you. However once out of the forest we went towards the kabini dam and this was one of the beautiful place i had experienced, the cool breeze was the most pleasent thing ..


I havenot mentioned much about the place becuase this was more of an unplanned trip and also it was more of trip to explore the place, hopefully i would write about this place in lot more details very soon hopefully within 2 months...


A feel of staying close to wild animals in the wild is an experience i never had before and it was worth it.. This place is around 220 - 230 kms from bangalore. Inside the forest we visited bannur gadde, gundre camp and nayalla camp. Next time we would be trekking to these forests by walk hopefully that would be lot more thiller with lots of wild elephants all along :-)
Bangalore - Mysore - HD Kote - N.Beguru - Gundre is the route. We returned back to bangalore by around 10pm in the night.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey soooper poorna.
neenu ninna gaadi sooper agi tirgadtha idira.... :) enjay. where is u r next endavour to???

-- srikanth

Anonymous said...

A sense of serenity prevailed after going thru these marvels of nature.Apart from being home to several animals i guess it acts as a haven for those who need to escape from the demanding presures of life, need to find that inner peace of mind, which is practically non existent like the diminishing tigers of India!