Changing Plans:
Well the start of a new year and there was a very promising long weekend just on second week of the first month ahead of us. Every one was busy planning were to go. Well, we then planned on visiting Bandipur and Nagarhole national parks and my friend Radha also wanted to take his family out and I suggested getting in touch with nature and wildlife would be a good idea. This would have to be my second trip to Bandipur and my first after I got my SLR camera. So we started making plans on places to visit on the way and started the process to search the net to find places to stay and so forth.
Well the next day on the way to work, I heard a ad/contest on the radio for Unforgettable Weekend (UFW) to Chamarajanagar and it said that the trip would include guided tour of Bandipur, BR Hills and other interesting place in and around Chamarajanagar and all accommodation and trek would be fully organized by department of tourism. Only thing each participant had to do is drive his car in the caravan and pay for the gas and rest would be taken care. I was initially very skeptical thinking that a group of 20 cars would be too big and would not be easily manageable. And going to see wildlife in such big groups would not be a good idea. Further you never know how many in the group would really be interested in wildlife. But at last we decided that we would give it a try and we entered into the contest.
And yes luck smiled on us and we got through the contest. As one of our colleagues commented in between lunch on Thursday that I was already on the road to Bandipur. And yes I was really excited. We were so thankful to KSTDC and Radio City for giving us this wonderful opportunity.
The First day:
The start of the weekend was already looking to be promising although we had a very late night dinner on Friday night all of us were up early in the morning and sure excitement was in the air. I called up to confirm whether Radha was up and to my surprise it was Vijay who picked up the call all excited. I would like to bring to your notice that Vijay is the person which we were worried as he is not among the best when it came to getting up early in the morning We assembled at lalbhagh at the assigned time with me and my family in car no 8 of the caravan & Vijay, Radha & family and Radha’s car had his family and our mutual friend Vijay was in Radha’s car.
So we started assembling the cars, well 25 cars to be precise, at Lalbag gate and after the initial registration and briefing we were handed out stickers of UFW with numbers (to recognize and trace the caravan) and T-Shirt, cap and trip papers and a map. We were also provided with a list of cell phone numbers of the people to contact in case we went missing during our caravan journey. There were lots of camera and video photographers to cover the event; I think they were from KSTDC. We were then requested to go as a caravan and it was very interesting seeing the way we started attracting attention of the rest of the people on the way.
We stopped near Mandya for breakfast at a Kamath hotel on the Mysore - Bangalore freeway. The breakfast was a buffet, which was very filling. We then headed to Mysore on the freeway and road was excellent till outskirts of Mysore, when we diverted to Nanjanagud. During the trip they were few cars trying to go back and forth in the convoy and not to be left behind we did the same  and thankfully no body over took the guiding car. Though we were in a convoy, we were able to reach good speeds and we did over 100 most of the time. Well as we came close to Nanjanagud luck ran out and the road changed from best to worst and by the time we reached Chamrajnagar we were late by 2hrs and reached around 2.30pm.
Civic Reception at Chamrajanagar
 Our arrival was being awaited by the authorities at Chamrajanagar and a grand welcome was arranged for us with traditional dances. The traffic was even blocked to allow the convoy to pass through. Every one on the street was looking in excitement and did not know what was happening or why the convoy was there. I then handed car over to Vijay and got down to take few pictures along with other press photographers and participants. It was interesting to watch the dancers dance and one of the guys even danced while standing on the thigh of another. Few of the participants even joined and danced with them.
After this we were greeted with another group at the entrance of J.H.Patel Auditorium and these guys were wearing a wild outfit and greeted each of the cars coming through the gate.
After that we had a small function in the auditorium and were briefed about the program.
  Here we came to know that the program was a promotional event organized by Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation (KSTDC) to promote tourism under the brand name of UFW (Unforgettable Weekend). This specific event was organized with the help of Chamrajanagar district administration and Karnataka Forest Department (KFD).
I was pleased to find that a government department like KSTDC thought of such an innovative idea to do there marketing but was also skeptical about how the rest of the event would fold out.
 This skepticism was seen in most of the participants and I don’t blame them since we all would have faced and interacted with many government bodies before and most of those experience might not have been good and to be fare most would not have been pleasing to be said the least. Though I was very pleased with the arrangements till that time I was not sure what to expect. We were then given an overview of the wide diversity of vegetation and wild lives found in the district and were provided with information on things to do and not to do during our stay there.
Breakup
 We were then told that not all could be taken to all the places due to logistical constraints and the convoy of 20 families would be made to smaller groups and assigned to one of the four places. And the rest of the event/trekking/safari’s would be arranged at the designated places. Even before I was going through the choices in my print out, my name was announced (same problem from school days when your names starts with A) and my family was selected for Bedaguli. We started our journey to Bedaguli by following jeep of our protocol officer. We took a diversion into Bedaguli from the main road to Satya from Chamrajanagar near a forest check post. We then passed through a winding narrow road with lots of different kinds of vegetation all around. There were different kinds of trees in just one place. We could see many trees that hardly had any leafs on them due to the winter and most leaves had turned red or orange and were flying in air and there were also few that were ever green forest types.
Day1: Bedaguli – A Night to remember
After a journey of about 1.5 hours; we reached our guest house at about 4pm; Our guest house was a beautiful bungalow built by British in 1910 and then renovated and maintained by forest department.
The guest house itself is located in the middle of the wilderness and was surrounded by greenery. There was fairly very thick green forest exactly in front of the guest house and it had lots of tall trees and it was a treat to watch.
  We then got ourselves freshened up and had the lunch that was waiting for us. We had a typical south Indian vegetarian lunch. I was surprised to find out that mineral water was arranged for us in the middle of jungle. After the lunch we were asked to get ready to go for an evening safari as it would get dark soon.
We got into the safari jeep and RFO of Bedaguli ‘Mr. Thyaga Raju’ also joined us. On the way we saw few human settlements by the roadside and few corporate coffee estates. After going for about half hour on the muddy road the temperature started to drop as we climbed the small road in a hilly terrain.
We then reached our destination – a highest peak in Bedaguli, which is close to 1960 2000 mts above sea level. The timing was just about right with the Sun just about to set and the sky was all lit up.
  After we were done admiring the view our attention was captured by the lonely standing rock on the tip of the mountain. This rock is the star attraction of this place and it gives out different kinds of sounds when hit with stones (it is believed to be hollow). After we came to know about this, as expected every one tried there hand at creating there own version of rock music .
The view is breath-taking as the slant of this rocks base was towards the fall of the cliff. It is a miracle that the stone has stood the test of times in that position. It would have been great to get on top of that rock and shout at the top of my voice and enjoy the feeling like being at the top of the world, but had to satisfy myself standing at the base as it was bit too dangerous to try out that stunt.
We were also told that this place is a good location to watch jungle activity and had we come bit earlier we would have had a chance. It was too dark for us to spot any thing by then. We then started to explore bit around this grass land (a.k.a., shoals) when all of a sudden a rabbit jumped right from the grass next to me, it almost threw me out of balance. It then ran down and then vanished into the grasses before I even had a chance to get my lens to focus. It was great to get a very good view of the near by ranges where we could spot a natural pond on the top of adjacent peaks. The funniest part was that at a particular location of that peak we were able to get full mobile ranges from the near by Velandur tower.
We had to finally head back to our guest house and it was very dark by now. On the way back we saw a ‘porcupine’ wandering on the roadside, trying to find some kind of food. We tried to use the jeeps head light to see it and then moved on without trying to get any close to it and we did not want it to feel threatened.
By the time we reached the guest house, we were in for a big surprise which was shocking at first, but as reality sank in, it got really exciting. The news was that there was no electricity in the bungalow which we were occupying and that there was no TV or any other modern facilities, these details had initially skipped our attention.
 The source of light was the candles and that for heat was the campfire, the temperature was as low as 12-13 and it was getting chiller. It was also in our mind that even to wash our faces after the dusty ride we had to use freezing water, which was so chilly. Guess what, this place had a 24 hr supply of running water as the water pipes were directly connected to the nearby water fall. By the time we had freshened ourselves, we found the campfire ready and a lot of local tribal people had already gathered around a gas light close to the fire. We then got around the campfire and were greeted by KSTDC and KFD officials who had come there to check on the arrangements made for us and also come to enjoy the tribal dance that was to be performed. So after that, drums and trumpets started and people started to sing and dance around. It was great to see how irrespective of the age difference every one among them danced to the tunes from children, adults and even grannies. Though it was freezing cold few of the dancers were even sweating and very involved in dancing and enjoying the music.
 It was nice to see how people enjoyed dancing with fellow human. When the beats picked up, even ‘Dr. Rameswarappa’ the district tourism, food and civil supplies officer also joined the group and was able to match most of their steps. It was amazing to watch him dance to their tunes. He then even dragged us to the dance and all of us tried to learn the dance. After some training by him we even learnt few steps and were enjoying it. Radha went one step forward and could match their steps for some time and did a pretty good job at it. There was a very popular song called ‘gora gore ga’ which was requested to be performed again at the end. I even managed to record a bit of it in my cell phone. I later found that Rameswarappa had over 10 masters’ degrees with him and that was something commendable.
After this there was discussion between the district officers and the people of Bedaguli. The district administration officers explained to them that this program was aimed at promoting tourism in the district, which would help them to get better employment and money into the district and Bedaguli. After this we had good candle light dinner with chicken and fish curry. The food as in the afternoon was very delicious. We then rested for the day.
Day 2: Bedaguli – Trekking in the wild
 We woke up around 6.15 AM and started to get ready for the morning trek by having the bath. Hot water was supplied to us and this was great relief since the water was freezing by then. While I was wandering around, found that the village of Bedaguli had only one running bus service and this used to leave in the morning and come back in the evening. This was confirmed when I saw how it was getting packed to its full capacity just then in few minutes in front of my eyes. We then decided that we would leave our moms at the guest house and they would join us in the jeep for breakfast at the anti poaching camp when our breakfast would be carried.
 We were 5 people and we had four armed forest officer with us to guide and protect us. There were two guns, one wireless radio and few other weapons. This all gave us very good comfort feeling to trek in that thick jungle. Forest department dropped us at the start of barricade to the forest by jeep and then we started our trek. Two officers led the way while two other officers followed us from behind. This formation was maintained through out our trek. Though we got up early, trying to take bath at the guest house was a bad idea and this delayed our trek by over 1.5 hours and it was around 7.40am when we started the trek and we lost the early golden hours.
 The forest was misty and rays of raising sun were peeping into the forest from tree gaps and it was magical. On the way we found few footprints of elephants and this was followed by few elephant dung. One of the guiding officers checked it and found it was fresh. We were all excited, thinking we might see some thing. This was followed by few alarm calls by the birds, which the leading officer looked to be listening to. He then stopped and asked us not to move and again tried to make sense of what the alarm call was about. After few intense seconds he asked us to start moving and started to load his double barrel gun. At this time every one was excited. After this we walked for some time but we could not see any thing. I guess we missed some thing  by few seconds, and then we continued to trek. The terrain had many types of vegetation and trekking route is bit extreme at certain points and is uphill at many locations. After a trek of over one and half hour we took a small break and had the water (well again mineral water and juices was being carried for us by one of the guards).
 Two more native forest guards then joined us and one of them looked to be good at tracking animals. After trekking for few more minutes we came across steep uphill path were the native guards bent down and called me to show me the soil. I thought it must be another elephant footprint, but for a change this time it was tiger pug mark and it was much more clearer. This looked to be big cat and the pug mark was pretty big. I took a shot of it. We then moved on the found more prints on the muddy road for some more time. It was almost three hours of trekking by now and we had not yet come across a single wild animal.
 At that point the guard asked me if we wanted to go along the jeep track, which is the easier one, or go through the grass land, which was much tougher and uphill one. He said if we go through grass land, we might have more chances of spotting some thing and wanted me to confirm this with other members if they would be able to walk through it. This was no decision to me at all, after such a long trek I had not come to go empty handed, so I said lets go through the grass land. After a trek of 5-6 minutes, one of the guards pointed me to look up the hill were we were walking, I could make from his face that he had seen some thing. Wow.. well at last there were two bison (Indian Gaur) or wild ox about 150 meters from were we were standing.
 They were grazing on the grass and after a couple of second of us watching them; they noticed us and started to move on. Since it was pretty big hill and they had to cover large distance in front of us, I had enough time (about 2 minutes) to capture them. I even managed to get my tripod from Vijay and position it and take few decent photographs. After this the trek was not much event full and we then reached our first big stop at around 10.15 am - the anti poaching camp close to Jodigere for breakfast. With in few minutes the breakfast jeep arrived and we had a hot pori and chetni with some kind of a subji. The pori and chetni combination was excellent. That would have to be the best pori I ever had and highest number of pori I had ever eaten. Although we were tired we were still fresh thanks to the climate and the pollution less environment. We followed this with little photo session and then headed to Jodigere.
 Jodigere – as the name suggests is the hilltop that we trekked to and has two lakes adjacent to each other. This is a very prominent waterhole in this area and a camp or some hours of waiting there in morning or evening would most likely result in some good sightings. Since we had to still cover the tribal settlement and had to get back to our guest house for lunch, we decided that we would move on.
On the way to the tribal settlement we came across the border of state of Karnataka and Tamilnadu. We could see how the forest were de-marked and also located the border post. It was similar to the posts that is shown in the bollywood movies only difference was that there was no guards to guard it. The forest guards mentioned that these places were the favorite location of the poacher Verappan.
After a brief rest at the border we then again started our trek to the tribal settlement. Although the trek till here was uphill and exhausting, we found that the trek down hill was not child’s play. The sun was scorching hot at that time in the mid afternoon; even then it was really cool in the shades. We had to pass through a part of the forest unlike other forest (general concept), this was more of a shrubby forest with tall growth like the paddy fields, and there were a lot of thorns in the growth. The thorns were not very sharp but were good enough to make scratch marks on a un protected skin. Our long sleeved clothes helped us to get through this patch of safely. Then came the most difficult part of the descent. The descent got steeper and the shrubby forest gave way to the forest with tall trees and some small plants, though we were happy to get into the shade we faced the difficulty of the descent as the sands below was loose and the only grip for the descent was the protruding roots of these trees. Some places we even thought that we would not make it to the other downhill as it was close to impossible to get through the slippery mud, and the descent was more than 75 degrees. I suspect the these trials were used by the tribals living in that area and the water flowing through these trails have made it more slippery by loosening the mud. We finally reached the settlement with no or little damage done although there were some close calls of slippage, which could have easily resulted in a sprained ankle or may be some bruises. We were also very happy coming down with little damage done to the cameras we were carrying.
 After a trek of about 2.5 hours we reached the tribal settlement at around 12.24 PM. The settlement was protected from wild life mainly elephants using a deep trench, which had to be crossed using wooden trench bridge (logs placed parallel to each other). Crossing the bridge was like tight rope walking were we cling to the branches which were thinner than grass blades for balance knowing very well that it cannot take even the slightest weight. The photo above shows Vijay trying to cross the trench and after seeing the photo, he remarked that this photo is one of the most unique ones – reason being that a elephant was crossing the elephant trench  ).
We finally reached the settlement crossing the bridge. The sight was a bit upsetting seeing the state of the tribal as most of them were effected by malnutrition and with no great shelter and protection. Their houses were tached and the wall were made of bamboo using clay as the binding material, this was a touching part of the trip which bought us back to the reality of life still existing in these jungles. In the tribal settlement, we met few children who were peeping out of there home to check on the visitors. They were also happy to see me take their pictures.
 After spending some time there we started our journey back to our guest house. The guards had plucked some gooseberries for us, and we devoured the fruit, as it was sweeter than honey. Imagine the state of our hunger and dehydrated stomach. We were almost through our stock of water and the fruit juices and were still not sure how much we had to go. We reached back to the awaiting jeep which took us to our guest house We were at the bungalow and reached at around 2.00 pm.
As always said every good thing had to come to an end. We had just enough time only for a quick bath and a quicker lunch before we had to depart this newly found heaven to Chamrajanagar to attend the closing function of UFW. We thanked all the forest officers for their hospitality and love. And then started off on our return journey. To add a word to the great hospitality, as remarked by one of the other participants in the function to follow the experience was better than a 5 star hotel and were treated as if we were there own son-in-laws. Over and above the love showered on us they gifted us big bottle of honey and a bottle of fruit juice, which was locally produced.
Well to sum up, this was one of the best trips I had ever been to, though there was not much wildlife sightings, family, my friends and me were very happy with the love and care showered on us by the authorities of KFD. I am very grateful for KSTDC for giving us this immemorial trip and have to say it truly was an unforgettable weekend at Bedaguli. The best part of this weekend that we were away from the pollution, the traffic din, out of mobile coverage and with no modern facilities will remain imprinted in the mind of all the participants.
I feel Bedaguli is one of such places were you need to invest at least a week to get good result and sightings. I personally will definitely come back to this place again and would recommend it to all nature and wildlife lovers. And would ask every one to try KSTDC packages since they are very well organized and are one of the best host that I have come across.
Sorry if you feel trip report is bit long, I have tried my best to keep it small but I had to share this with you. Thanks for reading it. For more information about Chamrajanagar and Bedaguli do get in touch with KSTD (Karnataka State Tourism Department) at http://www.karnatakatourism.org/ or visit http://www.mysterytrails.com/
Finally, I would like to thank Vijay and Radha for carrying my 2.5 kg tripod during most of the trek, with out them most of these pictures would never be possible.
For full set of pictures from my visit click on links below..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/akshath/tags/ufw/ (the best)
http://beta.zooomr.com/smartsets/akshath/9198 (the rest)
PDF Version of this report - http://akshath.googlepages.com/UFWtoBedaguli.pdf
_________________
Cheers,
Akshathkumar Shetty
Gallery - www.ddost.com
Last edited by akshath on Wed Jan 31, 2007 10:03 am; edited 2 times in total |
