Nostalgia from Doordarshan days

This is probably the first cartoon that I’ve ever seen in my life. It used to come very often on DD in the late 80’s. Infact when I was watching this today, I realized I still remember every line and every scene of this song. It goes like “Suraj Ek, Chanda Ek…”, the cartoon in which a “didi” tells a small boy about Ekta? It’s a story to illustrate the importance of unity in diversity. I sure enjoyed it then (do even more now) and hope you will have pleasant feelings of nostalgia too. Ek Anek Aur Ekta

More than just birds at republic day bird count

What a bird count it has been. We started at 6am and trekked till 6pm with an hour’s break in the middle. We managed to count about 2100 birds and 150 unique species. If you are interested, you can grab the republic day bird count list (xls file). I got to learn a great deal from other expert birders and now I can identify lot more birds very easily. Since it was a trek through the jungle, we had an amazing time and got to see lot more then birds. To start off, Bandipur is an elephant infested forest. So…

Republic day bird count @ Bandipur

I’m at Bandipur National park right now with full power and almost high-speed internet access 🙂 Few Naturalists and wildlife experts have gathered here to do a bird species count tomorrow. We leave the camp at 6am and trek through the forest the whole day in 4 groups and eventually meet at a central location by the end of the day and compare notes on birds. I’m not a bird expert, but I hope to learn a lot through this exercise. I drove down here today afternoon and the evening safari was amazing. Spotted some 20+ elephants and 2 packs…

Hunting for a tiger kill

Last night while having dinner, we suddenly heard a loud cry of an animal, followed by an elephant thrumpet and then whole forest around us just came alive. All the monkeys in the camp start screaming out, the pet dogs were getting restless and deers were giving alarm calls from all around. I could even hear langur at a distance. All this was coming from just 200m from the camp. I tried talking to the guests, and none of them seemed interested. So I just took my torch and jumped out of the camp trying to find out what happened….

Visit from fellow LJ bloggers

shortindiangirl and chaibacca where here the last two days along with their folks. Apparently they came over after mmk mentioned I was working here. Just before they left, chaibacca gave 100 bucks to the camp elephant thinking that would hand it over to the mahout. The elephant just took the money and put it in its mouth and gobbled it down. Now the mahout is planning to wait till tomorrow morning and see if he can get the money out from its crap. heh Was nice to have them here specially since we had this other big pile of people…

Elephant Charge

The elephants in the forests know we do not harm them directly, but they still are very careful in the presence of humans and are always on alert when they smell us. This female was staring at us for a while and then suddenly decided we were a threat and did the most amazing charge towards our jeep I’ve ever seen in my life. In other news, am down with fever here. Luckly its because of cold and not because of some freak insect bite.

Silver Jubilee

Yes. Today is my birthday. So add one more to that number that represents just how bald, tired, un-cool, nervous, and grumpy I am. I’ve earned it. But heck, looks like this is going to be the most interesting year in my life yet. Thank you to all who wrote in to wish me.

Updates from the jungle

Past few days have been very hectic and exciting. I got to see all the predators in the forests – The tiger, the leopard and two packs of the Indian wild dogs. Also saw few bears, elephants and lots of amazing birds. All the photos will be up once I’m back in Bangalore (which is this wednesday). The connectivity here is too slow. Weekend was hectic. Too many guests poured in here and I ran out of place to stay. Somehow survived in the forest guesthouse and now I’m back in my room since all the guests are gone. Few…

Finally a tiger in the wild

For the 1st time in my life, I managed to see a Tiger in the wild this morning. It was quite far, but we got to seem him for a full min. He was resting, saw us for a while, gave a huge growl and was off into the bushes. Since it was 7 in the morning with lost of mist, this is what I could manage.

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