India, week 2



For my second weekend I went on a safari in Nagarhole National Park (which is about 5 hours of driving from Bangalore, 4 the way my driver did it). The best spot for this kind of activity is the Kabini resort, which was booked for 2 months in advance. So I had to settle for a lot more expensive and a little less ideally located competitor.

The resort was beautiful with nice private cottages (above) and a big pool (below). They took us on two outings, one on Satuday afternoon until sunset, and one Sunday morning around sunrise (we started at 5 a.m., which was a bit early for my taste). I ended up sharing a driver with an Israeli couple, and -- of all people -- a PACS developer from Philips Medical.

If you survive the experience of speeding through a horrible dirt road sitting on the bed of a tiny jeep-type vehicle (made by Maruti for small people), you are rewarded by a close look at a wide selection of animals in their natural habitat. Due to the shaky vehicle, and the driver's good old fashioned common sense of not approaching hungry or angry animals, I didn't get to take a decent picture of everything I saw. Most notably all of my elephant pictures came out blurry, and I didn't even try to take pictures of wild dogs, a tiger (which was about 10 meters away but rapidly proceeded to chase a smaller animal than us), peacocks, crocodiles and a bunch of very colorful but also very alert birds.

The one thing the park has ample of is Spotted Deer (AKA tiger food).

Some of my more successful photographic attempts include this Crested Serpent Eagle...

...a snake...

...this Hoopoe bird that we almost ran over...

...a Gaur...

...this Mynas bird...

...a monkey...

...and this Indian Giant Squirrel (here is a picture where you can actually make out the beast)... Due to their uniquely balanced bodies, they spend most of the day as on this picture, just lying across a branch...

The ants of India seem to be very preoccupied with architecture. Aside from the enormous termite castles (sorry, they were so abundant that it never occured to me to take a picture :( ), I also saw some fascinating tree-nests.

Here a are a couple of Green Tree Ant nests.

Mysore is a large town close to Bangalore. It is famous for its botanical garden, and for the Mysore Palace depicted above. The Palace had a rather turbulent past, it got completely destroyed several times over the last 600 years or so. This latest incarnation isn't even a hundred years old, and is the creation of a British architect. The main attaction is seeing how the building blends Indian, Asian and European motifs... There are some gorgeous ivory-inlay doors inside, but I couldn't document them here because the guards were quite extreme about cameras.

This is the side entrance to the Palace.

And this is the main gate.

On the way back from Mysore, I stopped by the Ranganathittu bird sanctuary. The biggest attraction of the park is a boat ride that takes you close to the islands where birds are hanging off the bushes almost like they were decoration on a christmas tree. Getting into the boat involved more than a little bit of hand-to-hand combat, at which I was a great disadvantage, because I didn't want to end up in the water with my camera in hand. Finally I prevailed, which gave me a chance to take the pictures below.

They don't really do the place justice. There was such a diverse population of birds that as I was leafing through my pictures, I discovered species in the backround that I didn't even notice when I was there.

A few Little Egrets would turn up occasionally.

For me the most memorable bird of the sanctuary was the Painted Stork. They were abundant and very funny(or at least accident-prone) looking.

I was originally going for the landing stork, but got this small group of Cattle Egrets as a bonus.

The boat ride goes around a little rock-island, that seems to be permanently inhabited by this crocodile. He (she?) appeared very peaceful, even though some of the birds (not to mention humans) ventured quite close.

I enjoyed this little staredown between the birds and their human visitors...

Here is a portrait of an Asian Open-billed Stork. Beside the Painted Stork, they inhabited the area in the largest numbers.

I looked long and hard for one that would be carrying a baby, but this was the best I could do...

I also spotted some White Spoonbills.

Here is one last picture of the storks, as they quarrel over some very important stork-business.