This a very short
impromptu trip to Kabini. We live in Bangalore, which is approximately 265km
away from Kabini and we decided to take a short weekend trip to the reserve.
The main factor which influenced us to take the trip was to try the new car my
dad had bought.
We left our house
at 6am on the 23rd of July to go Kabini. We stay at Whitefield, so
we decided to take the nice ring road which goes through electronic city. Some
advice here, even if you are using GPS, you should pay more attention to the
road rather than the GPS because there are small details of the road which the
maps do not pick up.
After 1.5hrs we stopped at a restaurant
in a shop in a small town called Ramanagara. This was the setting of the Indian
movie called Sholey. At that time, this town was a tiny village with barely any
infrastructure. But since the movie it has transformed into a decent sized
town. In the restraint, I had a idili and tea while my father had masala dosa
and my brother had plain dosa.
After the 20min stop, we
continued the 3.5 hrs journey from Ramanagara to Kabini. Most of the roads were
smooth but there were too many cars and trucks using the roads that we were
forced to go slow or overtake. Luckily after Mysore it got better as the highways
mainly led to villages and as a result there were fewer cars.
Finaly we reached Kabini river
lodge at 10:45am. Since check in was at 11:30, we had to wait till our room was
ready. In that time, I was roaming around the hotel, keeping an eye out for
birds. I took a stroll to the river and was surprised to see how high the water
level was. There was a group of dead trees in the water which previously we
could walk quite close too. Now we were very far away from those trees. I
managed to see all tree species of cormorants found in the area, the Indian,
great and little cormorants. Additionally, there were a group of 5 river terns
flying around the area.
After a short time near the
river, I went back to the carpark. I was very lucky to see a feeding sessions
of birds. There were insects which were flying around and birds like chestnut
headed bee-eaters, scaly breasted munia, house sparrow, oriental magpie robins,
jungle crows and coppersmith barbets feeding on these insects. These birds were
catching the insects in midair! I was right in the middle of the feeding area
and often the birds were flying inches above my head!
Chestnut Headed Bee-eater
Oriental magpie robin
Jungle Crow
Chestnut Headed Bee-eater
Chestnut Headed Bee-eater
Scaly Breasted Munia
Jungle Crow
Bhraminy Kite
It was very tiring to chase
after the birds. After an hour with the feeding session, I went back to the
room to take rest and afterwards I went for lunch. While heading for lunch, I
saw 2 flyinf foxes flying over the Golghar. I was told that there was a nest
nearby. For lunch, I had chicken, fried fish, egg curry and roti.
After lunch, I was roaming
around the Golghar to see any wildlife. I managed to see a group of Bonnet Macaque.
This Macaque is only found in South India and is a endemic species of India.
I roamed around till 2:30 after
which I went back to the room and took a short 15 min nap before the safari. At
3:45 we left the lodge to the reserve for the first safari. The safari was dry
other than the 31 species of birds we managed to see. We saw peacocks, gray
jungle fowl, plain prina, ashy prina, spotted doves etc. The highlights of the
trip would have to be the Asian king vulture, orange headed thrush, Malabar giant
squirrel and the elephants which we saw. The first elephant we saw was a
female. The second elephant was a make tusker about 1km from the female. The
first thought which came to my mind was that these elephants were much smaller than
what we saw previously in the area.
We returned slightly
disappointed with the mammal life we saw in the safari, but we were overjoyed
with the bird life.
The next day we went for our
second and last safari. The first thing we saw was a changeable hawk eagle from
quite close. I got a few pictures before we went ahead. There was a jeep in front
of us who spotted a tiger and our jeep went directly to the other jeep. I
managed to get a glimpse of the tiger before it disappeared into the bush. Once
piece of advice for anyone wanting to go to Kabini, the best time to visit for
tigers is in October and November because there is an invasive weed which grows
rapidly in the forests of Kabini. Once in March and one in September, the
forest department cuts these weeds. This will help the sightings because we can
see the tiger. I my case if the weeds were not there, I would have been able to
take a shot of the tiger
Changeable Hawk Eagle
After waiting for it to come
out, we decided to check the other areas for other wildlife. We managed to see
a tusker, streak throated woodpecker and a mongoose.
It was not as eventful as we
expected and so we decided to head back and not book another night. On our way,
back we stopped at Ranganathittu bird sanctuary. Here we saw 38 species of
birds including the greater thick knee, intermediate egret, cattle egret, Indian
pond heron, Tickell's blue flycatcher, river terns , Jordon’s leafbird , Bhraminy
kite and more. This was one of the highlights of the trips.
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