A Successful Unscripted Trip

On a rainy Thursday morning, we woke up and planned an impromptu trip to Bandipur. After all, we did decide to give it another chance.

Me and my dad got tickets for an open jeep safari, shared with two other tourists. It was drizzling slightly so we put on our raincoats, got the camera ready and set out on the two-hour long safari through the jungles of Bandipur.

If you’re someone that absolutely loves the wildlife, especially tigers or any other big cat for that matter, you’ll never get bored of doing safaris. Although I’ve seen enough tigers by now to last me a lifetime, I can’t seem to get enough of the happiness of seeing them. Throughout the safari I kept hoping to see a tiger. But as usual, we saw nothing.

Our guide told us that a tiger had been spotted the previous day in the area we were driving through. We got excited thinking we too would spot it. But we drove on and on with the ice-cold raindrops hitting our face. We concluded that as it is, it’s already very hard to sight a tiger, and now with the rains the chances had lessened even more. Usually during summertime the chances of spotting a tiger are a little higher since they come out of their resting spots for a sip of water at the known waterholes, giving us a chance to see them. But now since it’s raining, it’s not very hard for them to find a drinking spot. Any spot that’s even slightly low-lying makes them a waterhole.

All in all, we saw no tigers. Not to our surprise, we saw quite a few birds- a Pipit, Herons, Cormorants, Crested Serpent Eagle, a juvenile Changeable Hawk-Eagle, Bee-eaters, Lapwings, Drongos, a flying pair of Racket-Tailed Drongos, Spotted Doves, a Yellow Oriole, Rufous Treepies, Bulbuls, Jungle Babblers, Peacocks and Peahens, Parakeets, Spotted Doves and Tickell’s Blue Flycatchers. Other than birds, we saw the regular deer herds, dozens of them. We also saw multiple Indian Gaurs grazing, elephants, a mongoose, ducks and even a turtle sun-bathing on a rock, under whatever little sunlight was there.

Our safari time was up and we were heading back to the safari center. We all were feeling pretty down on the way back. Just as we were neared the Bandipur reserve check-post, our guide instructed the driver to slow the vehicle down. He pulled out his binoculars and looked towards the trees on our left. As I was sitting exactly behind him, I tried looking in the direction he was looking. I was looking at the trees by the road thinking that he probably saw an exotic bird. But actually, he was looking farther away on the left, at the big mountain.

He was scanning the whole mountaintop for a certain something. He pointed a big boulder to me saying “Look at the top of the rock in the center” and passed the binocular to me. I looked through it, but didn’t see anything. He asked me to look closely, for my eyes were playing a trick on me. As I looked through the binoculars again, my jaw dropped. I just couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. Sitting absolutely quietly at the top of the boulder was a leopard! I was absolutely amazed by the sight. Leopards are usually elusive and prefer to keep their own company. But this one was absolutely unfazed. It sat there for a good 10 minutes while we clicked its photos. From the distance we were at and the position we were in, it was hard to tell its gender. After clicking a few decent pics, we rushed back to the safari center since we were already late.

As we drove towards Masinagudi, where we were staying the night, we talked about how our guide was very observant and was looking around with his eyes peeled. Had we gotten a different guide, we probably wouldn't have seen the leopard. That night I went to bed manifesting a tiger sighting the next day.

The next day we decided to do a bus safari in the Mudumalai zone. We saw numerous deer herds, elephants herds, Flamebacks, Brown-Capped Pygmy Woodpeckers, Spotted Doves, Rufous Treepies, Shrikes, White-Bellied Woodpeckers, Bank Swallows, Brahminy Starlings, Tickell's Blue Flycatcher, Hawk Cuckoo, Jungle Babblers and a pack of Wild Dogs, otherwise known as Dholes.

After the safari we drove towards the end of the road on TN side and came back. On the way back we saw an elephant herd by the road and stopped momentarily to click photos. As we drove back to the entry gate, I tried looking for the leopard on the same hill, but saw nothing. We returned back home feeling a little happy because despite it being rainy, we had good bird sightings and the leopard was the cherry on top! We then concluded that maybe Bandipur isn't as disappointing as it seems to be. Beware of the surprises it can throw at you when you're least expecting it!