You breathe every second of your life,
But the seconds that really count are the ones that take your breadth away…

That line makes so much more sense after a weekend like the last one….

Last weekend Team Applibase set out to spend a couple of days in Bandipur. Firstly special thanks to Anant… he got the booking done for us at Bandipur and without that we would have had a lot of probs wrt lodging(considering the Tiger Census and all).

The plan was simple… Go to Bandipur, enjoy Trekking and the Safari, Trek a mountain or two on the way back and be at Bangalore early monday morn. The execution was very different…

14th Jan 2006 4:00 Am

I was still weary from the last two days… My fever seemed to have reduced considerably but Mom was still anxious to see me go when I was not perfectly healthy. Dad was to drive me to the station, Dad simply tossed me the key and said drive.
(At this point I would like to say I have never driven my car. The reason being that when I got my license I was too happy with my bike license that I never drove my old car and when we got a new one dad was too scared to let me drive… I had not driven for like 2 years.)

I had been practicing driving lately on weekends and I promptly took the keys and half fearing missing the train I drove it. We were at the train station at 5:45 and the train was set to leave at 6:30.

Pramod decided to skip the trip thanks to some work( :( ) but the rest of em where there. Anant was busy in the weekend and could not join us and Musavir was out of town all week so did not make the trip. Shruthi and Vidya also had managed to excuse their way out of the trip :(

6:30 Am

The train finally started moving and we were all seated next to one another. The initial part of the journey was all getting used to the train and putting the luggage in place. Soon the black sky parted and a streak of orange appeared in the horizon… We spent most of the time talking to eachother and taking pics.

Our next major station of intrest was Maddur… Thanks to the famous “Maddur Vade”. We managed to buy a few of the Vades and they were really delicious. I by this time had forgotten all about the sickness and was biting into the roasted dish.

We then got down to playing cards… Asha suggested the game commonly known as “Donkey” (I guess the creator was not very original atleast in the naming part :P ). The game involved luck and a lot of memory… Theju and Asha seemed to have played the game before coz they were all ready with stratergy and all… the rest of us ended up learning the game the hardway :P.

A few rounds of “Donkey” and we realized we were arriving at the Mysore Railway Station. Mysore was the capital of most kings that ruled Karnataka and surrounding regions, its not hard to explain why… the city looked royal right from the start and if you get near the Palace it gets as royal as it can be.

10:15 Am

We got out of the train and headed straight for the prepaid auto stand. We had 7 of us so one auto had to hv 4 ppl and Asha, Preethi, Theju and I boarded that one. Sid, Prasad and Varma climbed into the other one. We asked the auto driver to drop us off at a decent restuarant near the Bus Station.

A few mins later we had had our breakfast and headed to the Bus Station which was right across the street form the Resturant. We had to wait for a bus heading towards Ooty as they went thru our destination. We got busy again taking snaps while we waited for the bus. We had just missed a bus and had to wait like 30 min for the next one.

As soon the next bus came there was a rush to get seats and it became so crazy that ppl who were getting down could not manage to get out of the bus thanks to ppl trying to get in. Many threw their belongings in thru the window so as to reserve the seats… Have to mention that Sid did the same… but almost a few secs later another bus to Ooty arrived and the crowd split into 2 and we managed to get seats in the second bus.

We were tired and this bus journey was comfortable enuf to get some rest… I was sleeping in almost no time… The bus stopped once for about 15 min at Gundlapete, where the driver and most of the travellers ate their lunch.

Pretty soon we were on our way again, our destination was only an hour away. The scenery got picterusque in a hurry and everywhere we looked it was either beautiful fields or green mountains under clear blue skies. We requested the conductor to stop when we reached Bandipur and he promptly did it.

3:00 Pm

The first thing we did was head to the office and see if our cottage was available. A few min of walk and a look into the register informed us that our rooms were available and we could have them. The next concern was food… suddenly skipping lunch did not seem like a good idea. We luckily found a mess but only Dosa was available and we ordered one each.

We spent some time taking pictures of us in the beautiful surroundings.

The officials later informed us that they did not allow treking anymore. Our only choice was the Safari. We decided to get acquainted with the surroundings after unloading our stuff in the room. Theju and I got busy taking photos of Deer that were close to our room. I got one of my best snaps of a tree in B&W(below). The walk was refreshing through the woods and we tried following sounds of footprints(we were pretty sure they were deer)

Our walk ended when we reached the pond near our cottage. Sid decided to make “Blair Which Project 2006” starring Theju… they ran arround with the cam as if theju was being chased by a wild animal… the video was just too hillarious.

We were then infromed that were were not allowed to go into the forest(we were already in it :P ). At this moment a group of elephants were just arriving for their bath. The Mahouts had mounted a female elephant while her calf was scrambling behind her. I was totally intregued by the animals and decided to get some closeup snaps. The mother was in the mood to be photographed and posed beautifully for me. The calf on the other hand was as curious about me as I was about him and started moving towards me. I guess I kindof wanted space and moved back and it came faster towards me… at this time I thought it was charging me and jumped way out of reach of the little elephant.

The little one seemed much less intrerested in me by this time he ran for the pond and started swimming. It was really beautiful watching the baby elephant play with the other elephants, it was having so much fun.

5:00 Pm

We headed for the evening Safari, we were one of the last groups to get to go to the Safari. Initially we had planned to take a night Safari but that had been stopped since sometime now. To add more to our displeasure we had to take the regular safari with a bus as all the Jeeps were booked. We booked a jeep for the morning and climbed into the Jeep.

We had no luck with Tigers in this trip but we saw a lot of Spotted Deer and other animals. The bus stopped near herds of deer at which time all the people in the bus leaned over to one side to get a glimpse of the animals. The Deer were not very scared and continued its grazing keeping an eye on us.

We returned to our rooms later in the evening feeling a little satisfied with our wildlife interaction. We decided to take a walk later when the sun had set and in almost complete darkness. We were amazed by the count of deer around our room. All we could see were their eyes and there were hundreds of them all around us.

We played a game of cards in the night and that was followed by a game which Sidharth invented called “Robot” (christened by Sid… NOTE: not at my approval :)) ) Will blog about that later :P.

Sunday 15th Feb 6:00 Am

The morning safari was more like the one we expected. We were up and ready early and really expecting to see something. The Safari did not disappoint… we started like the previous day with a lot of deer but things picked up soon. As we were driving on our path stood a magnificent Single Tusker. The elephant kept heading towards us and our driver took a u turn making our backs face the animal then drove a safe distance from him. He stopped twice to kick sand and throw it over his body, the elephant was amazing and we had to stop at a fork in the road and hope that he took the other route so we could continue with our journey.

After getting past the Tusker we saw a few monkeys and a lot of deer… The rest of the safari was almost uneventful (compared to those 10 min with the Tusker).

Once we were back we packed our bags and headed for GopalSwamy Betta… We had heard so much about the place that we had to drop by. We stopped at a village called Hangala ( 10KM from bandipur and 8 KM from Gundlupet ). We had to hitch a ride to the temple at the top of the mountain from Hangala… After asking around we settled for a Pick Up… The guys climbed onto the back and the girls sat up front and off we went.

The drive up the mountain was simply amazing, the wind blowing thru our hair and the feel of speed on our faces. The ride up the mountain was filled with some of the best scenerys I have seen.

The Temple on GopalSwamy Betta was beautiful… There was a story associated with the place which the priest at the Temple was explaining the tourists. I got to listen only the ending part which said that there were no crows on the mountain (the reason was what I missed :P ).

We spent sometime taking photos and taking some mid air snaps which I totally loved.

On the way back down we stopped at a pond and took a moment to enjoy the clear beauty surrounding us. We climbed up some rocks and sat down on top to savour the spleandor of the mountain.

The driver seemed to be in a hurry coming back and drove really fast. At one point my cap flew off and I had to run like 300 ft to got retrive it back :P.

We got a bus to Gundlepet and then took a bus from there to Mysore.

3:00 PM

We reached Mysore hungry and rushed to a nearby restuarant to grab lunch. After lunch we unloaded at the room and after resting for a few mins we walked towards the Mysore Bus Stand.

We had made plans to climb Chamundi Betta. We got down at the foot of the mountain and walked on the road expecting to see a section of the mountain where steps were laid. We walked for almost an hour and we finally came to the steps. Sadly it seemed we had chosen the wrong road and had walked a long distance to get to the steps. The steps led us to the huge Nandi. The beautiful stone bull was halfway up the mountain. By the time we got to the top it was almost 7 in the evening and the sky looked beautiful with stars.

We entered the temple and bared the crowd to get a glimpse of the goddess “Chamundi”. We ate some bhel puri and chaats outside and took the bus back to town.

The dinner was at a very badly lighted restuarant. I finally got to taste some wine and a scumptous dinner before getting back to the room. We played cards till almost 2 in the night and then decided to get some sleep before heading home.

The train was at 6:30 am and we managed to make it and get seats. The trip back was uneventful as the group was seperated coz of the unavailability of seats in a row. We finally reached Bangalore at 10:30, a little late coz the train had to stop at 2 places for a crossing.

This trip was truly special and here is hoping for many more trips…

Some other photos from the trip I loved :) :

PS: Sorry for the late entry, considering this trip happened about 3 weeks ago. I blame sickness and the size of the entry for the primary reasons. Theju has an entry posted on the same trip (he did it earlier today :P )