Camping in Kabini

Last weekend we went for a trip in Nagarhole National Park. The trip from Bangalore took us some six hours, with one stop for breakfast in an utterly forgettable hotel in Mysore, one stop to change a deflated tyre and final stop in a place called Handpost to have the deflated tyre fixed. While our driver was fixing the tyre, I had a chance to take pictures of the beautiful paddy fields surrounding the spot where the tyre let go. These make up a pretty constant scenery after passing through Mysore.

Our target was a campsite / resort called Bison right on the border of Nagarhole. The accommodation is in tents similar to those one would find in high-end wildlife resorts in Africa. Ours was a triple-accommodation affair, set high on stilts, with 2 bedrooms inside the tent and bath room outside of it. We were a bit worried about mozzies, but needlessly so. I must mention the owner / manager of the place, Shaaz Jung. His leopard pictures decorate the common areas and they're amazing. Things went slightly downhill from here, however. First we were told that it would be unlikely to see animals from the resort itself as the monsoon had grown the lake so big it reached into the jungle.

Secondly the government had banned the resorts in the area from driving tourists with safari jeeps in the park. Finally there had been a shooting incident between the local people and park officials and the park was deemed unsafe for tourists. At the end we went in for a short drive on a normal vehicle and just on the main road passing through the park and saw some baby elephants and spotted deer that had ventured outside the thick undergrowth.

In the evening there was a bonfire in the resort with all the guests attending and Shaaz let us know that a boat safari was organized for the morning despite all the hassles mentioned earlier.

Off we went and were immediately surrounded by sights and sounds of the jungle. On the water there were a lot of birds to see and take pictures of. On land we saw one more deer and a big elephant lumberjack cutting his way through a thick growth of bamboo to reach the juicy leaves growing near the top. We stopped to admire this big a determined animal for a long while before it was time to head back to the resort, have breakfast, pack up our things and start the long drive towards Bangalore.

I'm really happy with how many of the pictures turned out. Especially in the jungle it's a difficult balance between aperture, ISO and shutter speed with so little light available. In retrospect I should've gone for bigger ISO value and dealt with the noise in post-processing - the models refused to stay still and with 300mm focal length it's difficult (at least for me) to get truly crisp handheld shots even with the image stabilization. You can see all the pictures as a full-screen slideshow by clicking this.