Posts by: Kalyan Varma

This morning while going on the safari, we caught a carcass of a large gaur (indian bison) only 20% eaten by a tiger. Unlike last time, this dead body is very close to the safari game track. I know the tiger will come back tonight to eat the rest, so right now the plan is to stay there all night in the forest and hope to film/shoot the tiger when it comes to eat the kill. However, I need a special permit to stay there past 7pm and been trying to get that all day today. Let’s hope I get…

Baba Dioum, a naturalist from africa once said: In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught. This I think is the key to conservation anywhere in the world and this is what all the wildlife photographers and film makers should work for. (Sandesh, thanks for the quote)

A forest fire broke out today right behind the camp. We still don’t know who or what caused the fire, but atleast we managed to stop the fire before it did too much damage. We were lucky to get advance warning from the forest guard who was watching from top of a hill. Since there were no forest department folks at our camp, we (employees of the camp) rushed to the spot and started to fight the fire. Since this forest is very thick, it made our job very tough and all of us got burnt and bruised while we…

Things have been very hectic. I’ve had three more good leopard sightings after the last fight. Infact, there have been so many sightings, I have started to name each of the leopards. This leopard is now called Rocky the 3 feet leopard. Since I’m seeing so many of them, I have even started to predict them etc. Generally life’s good in the forests 🙂 Been in Bangalore the last two days. This place had changed quite a bit in the last few months. There are lot more one-ways, lot of new restaurants and traffic situation seems to have actually improved…

Had got to see one of those, ‘Once in a lifetime’ event here in the forest. There have been quite a bit of leopard sightings here, but earlier this week I spotted a leopard, one of the top predator of the forest, being hunted down by a pack of wild dogs. What most of the people do not know is that, the wild dogs are the most brutal and effective killers in the forests. People have even seen them attack a tiger and eat it up. Normally a tiger’s success rate of a hunt is about 30% while the wild…

Leopard’s are second largest predator in these forest. They are more effective then the tiger because of its light weight which makes it more agile and gives the cat the ability to climb trees. They are also more adaptive to varying terrain and availability of prey (which is why you find them even in Mumbai). They are found like this on top of trees as it gives the leopard a chance to escape the other predators like the tiger and the wild dogs. ( Click on the image for larger version ) Wildlife photographers are always greedy. No matter how…

I was talking to krishi last night and then it hit me. Sometimes working for a company is like making a high school relationship work. When you get into a relationship, you buy your partner lot of gifts, take him/her out on every occasion you get and you think about him/her everyday. Joining a company is like that too. You tell all your friends how nice it is and how well they treat you, you give 110% for the company and the company treats you like a king. After a while in the relationship, things could go in two ways….

One of the most extraordinary things happened today. In the camp here, we have about 2 dozen monkey’s (bonnet macaques) which pretty much hang around here, as they get continuous food from our leftovers and they feel pretty safe here in the camp as the predators usually stay away from here. They usually wait outside the place where we eat and at every opportunity they get, they jump in, grab the food and rush out. Infact they are quite a problem for the staff here. Since the time I have come, I have started feeding them, so they don’t mess…

Today we had a bunch of retired forest officials coming over at the resort. While we were on the safari, we happened to see a Barking deer and I was telling them how this animal was quite rare to find in other forests etc. And then one of the person in the jeep tells the other one “This barking deer is one of the tastiest meat I’ve ever tasted. Come over to my place sometime and I shall arrange for the meat”. These are the forest officials who are suppose to protect these forests and animals and keep the poachers…

jwz has written an excellent piece on why enterprise software does not work in open source projects and also drives home some good points on general software projects. A *must* read.