Karnataka government runs several wildlife tourist lodges called Jungle Lodges. I had heard quite a bit about these but this was my first experience with them. We picked the Jungle lodge at Kabini since this was rated as one of the top ten wildlife resorts in the world by a British travel magazine. If there was one thing true about this resort, this is a real top notch resort with excellent facilities, location and most of all service. It blows your mind off knowing that this is something run by a government entity. The one time I felt proud of govt work in India.
We set off on Aug 12, Friday at around 8:30 pm after dinner from Bangalore and reached Mysore around midnight. We rested in Mysore for the night and next day after breakfast at around 10:00 am headed out from Mysore towards Kabini Lodge which is in Nagarhole forest also know as Rajiv Gandhi National Park. Surprisingly the road was excellent but for the last 10-15 km. We reached the lodge by 11:30 am. There are 3 kinds of accomdations in the lodge, New Cottages (6 of them) right on the banks of Kabini, other cottages not as cool and tents. Because we had reserved well in advance, we were able to get the one of the new cottages right on the banks of Kabini. Kabini is a tributary of Cauvery river . Bandipur National Park (famous for Tigers) and Nagarhole National Park (famous for Elephants) are on the either side of Kabini.
The cottage had one large room with 3 beds and a nice big bathroom. The room and its furnishings was comparable to a 4 star hotel. All throught the stay the staff was very courteous and very attentive. After we checked in we went around the place admiring the natural beauty and came to Gol Ghar a meeting place for lunch/dinner.
Right near Gol Ghar were couple of tree houses overlooking the Kabini.
The kids got very excited and started going up the rope ladder hanging down from the tree. Over the next 24 hours they went back to the tree house at every opportunity they got. After a while it actually got addictive to even the adults. They had a rope net tied under the tree on which kids could roll down from the top of the tree and so all in all it was a blast. There were lot of guests with kids in the same age range of 6-12 and there was lot of bonding happening.
They served us lunch around 1:30 (very good vegeterian lunch. They had non-veg too). After lunch Bhavani and I relaxed while kids stayed busy with their new found friends at the tree house. At around 3:30 we gathered for Tea at Gol Ghar again. After Tea they had us split into groups with some going for boat rides and some going for safari. We got to go on a safari with another family also from Bangalore. The safari was great. We spotted Chital (spotted deer), Sambar, Macau (black faced monkey which is really adept at long jumps from one tree to another), Snake Eagle, Peacock, KingFisher, Bison, herds of wild elephants. A big male bison was so huge it almost was the size of a small pickup truck.
We had an interesting incident which scared living daylights of everyone in the jeep except of that of the driver. A herd of elephants wanted to cross the road to get to the watering hole when we spotted them and stopped our jeep in the tracks. The elephants decided to wait us out. Because we wanted to see the whole herd pass infront of us, our driver backed the jeep for about 100 feet and stopped. After 2 min waiting we decided to move on since the elephants were showing more patience than us. As our jeep started moving slowly again, the leader of the herd came charging at us to get us to move fast. Seeing a big animal charging at you in the Jungle is not pretty and everyone screamed at the driver to hit the pedal but the driver knowing the behavior took it easy and the elephant stopped in its track. That was something we will recollect for sometime. We then stopped at a village deep inside the Jungle where there were several tamed elephants. We got to ride one of those in the jungle and it was not exactly a pleasant experience knowing how elephants walk.
We came back to the lodge and kids were absolutely thrilled with their experience by now. In the evening they had a video showing the wildlife in the Nagarhole park. While kids watched that, I had couple of shots of Vodka and some good munchies. We them had some really good dinner and retired for the night. Next morning they woke us up at 6 am and served Tea/Coffee in the room. At 6:30 - 6:45 am we set out on a boat ride. This was to catch glimpses of animals which come to the watering hole either early morning or late in the afternoon. We could only spot a herd of Sambar deer. We came back to the lodge at around 9:30, had breakfast and checked out leaving completely satisfied with our stay at this wonderful place.
