Visit to KABINI River Lodge (Nagarhole National Park).

After a long wait I was able to block my visit to famous KABINI Jungle Lodge, its one of the prestigious resorts run by Govt of Karnataka in association with Jungle lodges Pvt Ltd. As I am passionate about capturing wildlife in their natural habitat, I was thrilled to visit Kabini.

It’s a known fact that most of the wildlife enthusiasts like me, Kabini means open jeep safari inside Nagarahole National Park, watching and photographing wild big cats . I started my photographic journey 2 years back.

Kabini is 220 KMs from Bangalore via Mysore and HD Kote, we can reach Kabini in approximately 4 hours of journey in car. Public transport is  not so feasible . I started at 6 am from my house and reached the resort by 12:30pm and were received by resort staff . Completed check in formalities and headed for lunch at Gol Ghar (dinning hall)  and met our   accompanying naturalist and we were ready for our first safari at 3:30 PM.

The story of Jungle Lodges and Resorts Ltd,began its operations at Kabini over 30ysr ago.What is Kabini River Lodge today was earlier the hunting Lodge of the Maharajah of Mysore and a favourite of his guests too. Nagarhole national park is about 643sq.km.

The journey from Bangalore to Mysore was good but we did not expect such a bad road ahead of us after Mysore. We had a bad road of about 12 km from Mysore which is under renovation. At the resort you can expect a friendly staff .One can choose from lot of options from tent house to cottage according to one's budget.

Amenities at the resort are good. The driving force to visit Kabini is the Wildlife, so you can see few   wildlife photographers .Amateur photographers can get some tips on photography from the experts who visit there.

Yes it was 3.30 pm and I was all set to have my first open jeep safari, which lasted for about three hours.  You better carry a binoculars, since you can view colorful birds and other wildlife animals in their real glory and have a closer look at them through your binoculars. As soon as we started our safari, we spotted a Leopard just by road side relaxing on the bark of a tree completely blended in the natural habitat. It’s difficult to spot a leopard but ya all thanks to keen eyes of our trackers, a good start.

We then saw few birds like Crested Serpent Eagle, Crested Hawk-Eagle, Red-Watted lapwing, common Hawk –Cuckoo and animals like Gaur, Spotted Deer, Malabar Giant Squirrel .For bird enthusiast it’s a festival .Kabini is a good place for both bird watchers and wildlife enthusiast.

 
At the end of our safari for the day we had most amazing experience for which most of wildlife enthusiast crave for, a charge from a herd of elephants, an experience of a lifetime. We saw herd of elephants with couple of calves. Elephants are very protective about their babies like human beings. With a sense of insecurity they chased for about 4 to 5 times it was a bit frightening for common people but those who love adventure will surely enjoy it. We were back to the resort around 7 pm, at 8.30 dinner was served at Gol  Ghar, since I am foodie I was bit disappointed by the menu compared to other jungle resort at K. Gudi, Bheemeshwari.

We relaxed in our tent house after dinner, hoping to spot at a Tiger tomorrow. Next day (day 2) staff gave a wake-up call at 5.45 am and both of us were ready for another safari at 6.30 am. The forest was covered with mist. We did not spot any animal other than few birds, few of them which I already had seen yesterday. At 9.30am we had our breakfast, then we went for boat ride for about half an hour . And we did see a lot of  water birds  like little  Cormorant  , Indian Cormorant, Grey Heron, Rive Tern, Green Bee Eater, White Throated Kingfisher .

At 6.30 pm we started for a second safari for the day, but it was one of the most of disappointing safari at kabini, since we spotted none of the animals other than a tusker.

On our last day at kabini and on our last safari, we started with a bitter feeling (since we did not spot any wildlife yesterday). There was something ahead of us which we did not expect. After spending few hours in forest we did not spot any animal ,after some time we got a information that there was a leopard  from other safari riders, we immediately rushed to the spot. Because of one of the safari vehicle's sounds, leopard vanished into bush(there were nearly three vehicle waiting ,who left the spot other than our vehicle ).We waited for a while for it reappear from the bush .Yes it did come out of the bushes  after about 10 to 15 minutes of wait, it crossed the road in front of us and quenched its thirst on other side of road in a pool of water ,disappeared into the bushes. This was one of the golden moments for a photographer to capture the movements of the leopard so closely (we too have captured it through our camera). I thoroughly enjoyed the sighting through my binoculars.



Yes it was time for us to end our three day visit at Kabini hoping to spot a Tiger on my next visit.