Wildlife and Wildlife Photography - Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, August 2016

Honestly my this trip to Masinagudi was to spot the Black Panther, but as we all know that precious things we do not get so easily, so this trip was incomplete as I did not get to spot Black Panther.

Masinagudi trip was planned a month earlier & there were many additions & then deletions, but lastly ‘Hum Paanch’ (Five of us) were left from 10. Five of us were Sandeep, Sumit, Lingraj, Rohit & Yours truely.  So we took one of our friend’s car & left on Friday the 12^th August 2016. It was my first trip with friends, & I wanted it to be the memorable one. The plan was to stay at Masinagudi for 2 nights & then move to Ooty, Coonoor & then back to Bangalore.

The route plan was to go through Bandipur National Park, I had my camera ready & this time it was NikonD3200 with Nikkor lens 70-300mm, now the reason for not going to the higher models, the weather played the major role in deciding the model. It is really a very user friendly & it helps you to learn a lot. This was supposed to be my first all night trip & the longest road trip so far.

So we started on 12^th night & we reached Bandipur at 4:15 hours & we had to wait because the gates would happen only at 6:00 hrs. So we had some clicks & then I took out my camera & was ready to take the first picture of the trip.

By 6:30, we were through the gate & we saw both side, huge herds of Spotted Deer, then came Bison & Elephants, & by 7:00 hrs we were into Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, TamilNadu. Beautiful l&scapes & lovely narrow roads, we could see the huge Nilgiri Range & by 9:20 hrs, we reached our destination De Rock, Masinagudi.

Our plan was to go for evening safari & after lunch we started towards the ticket counter which was 6-7 kms away from our homestay. On our way, we saw 7-8 cars spotting something & I told Rohit to go ahead & see & to our left we saw an Elephant, could not be picturized as it was way far & lots of bushes & parallel to it was the National Animal of India, The Royal Bengal Tiger, again way far & could only be seen half of it, before it went into the bushes. Probably, a 15 mins earlier it had crossed the road where the cars were halted, as it is rightly said ‘You need to be at the right spot at the right time’, holds true in this case as well, had we been a little earlier or a lot earlier, we would have got it or again missed it respectively.

So we reached the ticket counter & we saw a almost a huge crowd of 100 people, excluding us & to my disappointment, only two canters & the timings were from 2 pm to 6pm & I asked the counter person, “what would be the duration of Safari?”, he replied “ depending on the sighting”. & I knew this was not my type of safari & we got our chance around 18:15 hrs & we only saw deer as everyone in the canter was excited to see the deer & lastly saw an Elephant, which was old, lonely & almost on the verge of natural death. Then we saw the National bird of India, the Peacock & it was beautifully sitting as if a statue was placed there, that made my day. Apart from Spotted Deer, Elephant & Peacock, no other animal was spotted & we returned to the ending point.

We decided to take a trek next morning & moved towards our home stay, when we saw a huge traffic & a female Elephant having supper. Obviously, there was traffic & police had caught two people, who were drunk & had gone near the Elephant & her calf to take the images. Now the worst case would have been, the female Elephant would have trampled them & some cars here & there would have been flung in anger & ruthlessness of the huge animal, which would be a fitting reply for such stupid act of few educated illiterate people. Luckily, police was on time & caught them, saving a lot of trouble, otherwise the Elephants would have even flung our car, though we were not at any fault & I was able to take some images from moving car.The irony was that we saw more animals outside of the safari zone than in the safari and we decided not to go for anymore safari. 

Wildlife and Wildlife Photography - Elephants, Bandipur 2016

All eyes were trying to spot the National Animal of India - The Tiger, when one of them whispered a beautiful pair of Elephants! The eyes moved in the direction where this beautiful pair of Elephants were dancing looked like..............

Bandipur has always been one of my favourite wildlife destination, and yes I spotted my first Tiger here. It is a forest full of wildlife diversity and people love coming here, especially those who are wildlife and photography enthusiasts.

Bandipur Tiger Reserve is situated in Mysore, & Chamarajanagar districts of Karnataka. Kabini and Bandipur are separated by the Kabini river, which plays an important part of thriving the wildlife in the forests of Bandipur, Kabini and Wayanad. Bandipur has been a place where the tiger sighting has been regular and not to forget the Prince or the Alpha male tiger, which will definitely meet you the next time you go. Leopard and Bisons are also quite regularly sighted along with birds like Crested Hawk Eagle, Crested Serpent Eagle, Hoopoe, Shikra and many more. 

This is about the encounter I had with the most mesmerizing mammal - Elephants. Elephants are the largest mammals living on land and are divided into Asian Elephants & African Elephants. They can be found in Africa, & South East Asia. Asian Elephants can be divided into Sumatran, Indian, Srilankan, & Borneo. 

Elephants are herbivores and they normally prefer to stay near water and tend to move away or avoid to cross paths with the predators like Tiger, Lions, Leopards or Wild Dogs. This is because, the new born calves are more vulnerable than the adults. So even if any body nears their calves, they either charge or move away from that area. Elephants socialise in groups and in such a way that new groups can get mixed into the other group and thus they adjust themselves. Everyone helps each other and they are lead by Matriarch . The males separate once they reach puberty and then they go with other males. The group first makes calf safe and then they deal with danger, such is their culture and they do not stand any nuisance. It is said that they can run 1 km  while chasing someone.

I and Elephants have a history, for my first visit to Bandipur and the first animal we encountered was of a family of Elephants which had a baby just one week old. We were just admiring the cutie when some flash caused irritation to them and the Matriarch just made the calf and mother safe and charged, unfortunately our jeep did not start, luckily ti was just a mock charge! Phew! it was very close. That was my first wild encounter of Elephants and such an adventurous welcome to Bandipur I received back in 2012.

This time we saw a huge tusker just on the way to Bandipur's forest gates, unfortunately the images were not good, but as we moved in on the evening safari, So our eyes were itching to spot Tiger, when the naturalist whispered Elephants! Our eyes moved to the direction where he spotted a mother and calf dancing as it look like ............... Or She was trying to tell them that "we need to welcome them as they are admirers and not the killers, they are our defenders and not the destroyers. Welcome them baby, C'mon do not be shy!, " We need to save them, they are on verge of extinction, I would like to tell you all, please do your bit in saving these beautiful creatures.

Please see the image here :

Next we moved little further after trying to get the calf to welcome us, and we saw another lovely herd of Elephants again, now it was a huge group with adults and calves all together taking sand bath and trying to cool them from teh scorching heat. These mammals will not do anything, if you do not harass them and people take them in wrong sense and then they perform atrocities on them and thus these beautiful mammals are on verge of extinction.

Please check the image here:

The next day evening safari, we were trying to search the mother and calf pair, when we spotted calf's father as well with them and they were standing to welcome us like the last day, this time they were more cautious, but it was Kodak moment, relish the image here................

Bandipur has lot of resorts and forest guest house as well. The best option would be Jungle Lodges & Resorts , they have their own jeeps and canter to take around the wildlife enthusiast to the forest and the Forest departmetn has the facility of canter to take around the wildlife enthusiasts around the forest. The duration is the difference, the duration or timings are morning from 6:30 to 9:30 hrs and evenings 16:00 to 18:30 hrs and JLR's jeeps and canter take you around for the full 3 hrs in morning and 2.5 hrs in evening, while Forests department's canter will take you around only for 1 hour round and will bring you back. If you wish to take the Forest department's vehicle, book the ride in advance to avoid last minute hassles. The Forest department's website is tariff plan and safari plan by the Forest department.

Wildlife and Wildlife Photography - Leopard, Bandipur, March 2016

Let me tell you, In India, we have four predators found - Lion, Tiger, Leopards and Wild Dogs. Asiatic Lions are found only in Sasan Gir - Gujarat. No other country has got this pride of having Asiatic Lions.

Tigers are found in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Kerela, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and in East India. Leopards are found all over India, same as Wild Dogs as well or Dhole as they are known.

We were into our fourth safari at Bandipur on 26th March 2016 morning, we entered with the hope that we do see Prince, Leopard and Wild Dogs. We were capturing the images of Crested Hawk Eagle or Changeable Hawk Eagle, when we got a tip saying a Leopard was spotted. We sped off in that direction.

We saw like 6 vehicles converging in one place and were pointing towards a tree in opposite direction. Then we saw a Leopard some 100 mtrs away on a tree having breakfast of a deer.

It was a beautiful sub adult leopard, shiny fur and was looking very intense while having break fast. He had managed to take his prey on the tree all alone. It gave few poses while eating and then it went down the tree into the bushes.

Our naturalist said that lets wait because he has not gone very far and it will come back to the tree, as they do not leave the prey unprotected. After 15 mins, it came from the backside of the vehicle and I managed to click a picture (yet to be processed). It went into the bushes never to return not even in he evening.

Please do have a look at this Leopard pics - Wildlife and WIldlife Photography Blog .......................

Leopard, Bandipur 2016 - jungle_tales - Nimit Bhatt

Wildlife and Wildlife Photography - Leopard, Bandipur March 2016

Wildlife and Wildlife Photography -Bandipur Trip 2016

 

Nimit Bhatt - https://plus.google.com/u/0/

This was at Gopal Swamy Betta hill, me and Rupesh had gone to the hill which was not far away from Bandipur.

Its a lovely place, this place is such a point that you can see the three sanctuaries i.e. Mudumalai, Wayanad and Bandipur converging.

You can even see herds of Elephants down the valley, the road to it has been stopped as it is too dangerous.

This was the pic taken from Samsung Galaxy J5 - Wildlife and Wildlife Photography Blog

Wildlife and Wildlife Photography - Bandipur Trip March 2016

This was a small trip planned 2 months ago and this time bro was not travelling with us.

We are avid lovers of Wildlife and Wildlife photography is my dad's and mine hobby. I even blog about it - Wildlife and Wildlife Photography Blog - Nimit Bhatt.

This time, I wnated to spot a tiger, because it was long wait and this time I wanted to break teh jinx. Well, I did spot the tiget and in the first safari itself.

This was clicked en route to Bandipur - Wildlife and Wildlife Photography Blog

 

Nimit Bhatt - https://plus.google.com/u/0/

Nimit Bhatt