Bhandipur June 2012

Baby enjoying mothers milk

Bhandipur - Excellent trip, better than Kabini.  Stayed in Junlge Lodges again.  JLR is actually outside the forest entry gate.  Good accommodation and food with service as usual.  

Only Jeep Safari in Bhandipur.  Usual evening and morning rides.  We stayed for 2 days here as well.  So we got 4 trips into the forest.  One in the morning and the other one in the evening for 2 days.

Elephant heard

Evening safari is quiet cool and good.  The weather was not hot at 3.30pm.  Inside the forest it was totally dry. 

Of course as  tradition the first thing you get to see is the Spotted Deers.  The above picture was one of the rare sighting.  The next we spotted a heard of Elephants with 2 small babies.  They came for the water hole which was completely dry and they kept moving.

TIGER, ha!ha!hah! we spotted a tiger in the next day morning safari.  Near a small water hole coming to drink.  As it was coming we did spot and without much noise our safari jeep moved a bit in the front and close to the water hole.  The thirsty tiger started drinking water, once the thirst was quenched, tiger went inside the water hole to get a nice cool dip for the whole body.  Sat in the water for atleast 1/2 hour, trying to make no noise the whole jeep was quiet and thrilled watching tiger so close.

What a pose

Relaxing and Cooling

Once cooled got up and started a low growling.  Our Safari driver said its calling the babies to come to the water, but they never came.  We in fact waited to see if they will also come out to drink with their mother.  But no luck, time was running out so we left and came back to lodge.

Growling tiger 

Tiger reaching the water hole

The next day morning at 7.00, we saw the same tiger again.  It was just reaching the water hole as you see in this picture.

The morning jeep carried a different group, all holding big zoom lenses trying to  capture the great moment in their cameras.  We both were thrilled again to see the tiger and this time we stayed there for a longer time.

Drinking water, see the reflection in the water

What a muscular body!  Fully grown female.  This was commented by driver who was also clicking pictures in his cell phone.

Same procedure the tiger followed, drinking water first and getting down in the water to get cool.  This time she was not sitting in the water for a long time, since there was something moving on the other side of the bush, which we did not realise.

Trying to see what is moving the other side of the bush

Came out sat for a little while on the banks of the water hole trying to see what is on the other side of the bush.  Few seconds it got up and moved again growling, this was little panicky.  Driver said may be because the babies are alone and something is moving.   Once the tiger moved out of our sight we saw the elephants, tamed ones walking slowly with their bell on the neck, so this was the cause for the tiger to be restless.

The trip came to an end, we felt a bit sad to leave the place since may be the tiger will come again to the same spot in the next drive.  Anyways time for us to leave.  Shared the pictures with the other guests in the JLR and left for Bangalore.