Abhayaranyam

Again I am writing this one after a long long gap, maybe I have incorporated the habit of not writing enough...not a good sign
But here is something that touched my heart and compelled me to write. This year, sometime during the end of November we decided that its quite a while since we travelled somewhere so we decided to search...
Our search took us to check the forest guest houses in and around Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Our friend Nilanjan came up with an idea to visit Abhayaranyam which is a forest guest house in Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. The idea to stay in a tiger reserve was exciting so we searched all over the internet for more details about the guest house. To our despair there was nothing that could be called as 'detailed' description of the place, barely any pictures, no posts.. but we didnt lose hope, our intense search provided us with the contact numbers of the forest officer whom we could call to book the place.
So we made the booking for the cottage that they had there. Then started the endless wait for the day of our trip. We had planned everything, the places we would visit on our stay there, the food that we will carry etc.
Finally the day arrived. We had decided to leave early in the morning to reach the place as early as possible. We had checked with the concerned person there about the check-in time, fortunately there was no strictness around it! So we left at sharp 4 am, calculating the possibility of reaching that place at 9 am. The night drive was awesome, the road had a few cars zipping around. After a drive of about an hour and a half we decided to take a short break. In another 10 minutes we were back in top gear. After an hour or so, we could see the dawn breaking in front of our eyes, the sun peeking through the horizon...
We crossed Mysore at 6:45 am and our new GPS navigator guided us well through the city roads into the forest trail.
We reached Bandipur forest at about 8am and decided to make a small halt once twe crossed the forest zone. Mudumalai was not too far from there but reaching at 9 am sounded a bit embarrasing now. Anyways, we decided to drive at a very slow speed and reached the destination at 9:30 am.
The view was unlike anything we had ever seen. This bunglow can not be seen from the road, one has to climb a short uphill road to reach there. It is surounded by dense forest on all sides with a view of the Nilgiri hills on two sides.
Right in front of the bunglow there is an overgrowth of elephant grasses where we did see some elephant and bison dung. Oh, I forgot to mention the numerous herds of deer we saw while crossing the forest zone.
On reaching the bunglow , we were warmly greeted by the caretaker who confirmed our booking and requested us to wait for a while while the rooms were being cleaned up.
There were about 3-4 people who took care of the bunglow there and they stayed in a couple of cottages right behind ours, where they had a kitchen and their rooms.
The Abhayaranyam bunglow is quite a large one with two huge bedrooms, two bathrooms with western toilet, a balcony that connects the two bedrooms and a dining hall in between the bedrooms. the best part is, this has a watchtower with glass windows on all sides where you can spend the daytime birdwatching. (We were advised not to climb up to the watchtower at night)
Our day was spent taking rest, and catching glimpse of shy deer, watching a few peacocks on the grassy area, seeing some wild boar and mongoose and sighting a couple of malabar squirrels on the trees nearby. We also visited the elephant feeding camp in the evening and saw how forest elephants were getting their daily diet served by their mahouts.
The lunch and dinner at Abhayaranyam were prepared on request and the food was very much edible and quite beyond our expectation considering we were in the middle of the forest with the nearest village at least 5km away.
Honestly we weren't disappointed at all with our first day experience there. Towards late evening, the four of us started a quiet conversation sitting on the chairs and sofa on the balcony. We didnt have anything to do. Outside it was completely dark with lights from occassional cars passing through that road. Suddenly there was a power cut and we were in the midst of complete darkness. Then I realised it wasn't actually a power cut but a low voltage situation and only the filaments of the bulbs were illuminated. The caretaker gave us some candles though. We decided to finish dinner too and play a little boardgame of Ludo. After dinner, we took some chairs and sat outside the bunglow main door listening to the silence and occassionally talking.
After about 15 minutes we came inside and were playing a game of Ludo when we thought what we heard was an elephant's trumpet. But then we realised that since it was too quiet outside even the sound of a truck horn could sound like that so we continued playing. At about quarter to 11 we decided to call it a night and went to our rooms. We slept barely for 10 minutes when i heard someone brooming outside the cottage. The sound continued so Sudipto and I decided to knock Nilanjan's room and find out if they were hearing what we did. It was dark and scary when we went to their room. They had heard it too. Nilanjan quickly grabbed his torch and we came to our room and opened the window a little to find out the source of the sound.
What we saw outside startled us. It was a cloudy night, so in the bleak light of the moon we saw couple of wild elephants grazing at the grass in front of the cottage. We decided to check the balcony windows and at every window we saw there were 2-3 elephants. We realised that there were about 10 or 12 elephants surrounding the cottage, who came there from the forest for a midnight snack. Among them there were 3 tuskers will gigantic tusks. We were frozen in fear and were talking in whispers. Finally they left after an hour or so, but we couldnt sleep in fear.
But sleep did come eventually and the next morning we woke up with a fresh joy.
We decided to go to Gopalaswamy Betta which is a hill about 40 km from the guest house. This place gives a panaromic view of the forest below. We saw some elephants in the forest as we climbed the hill.
It had started raining on our way back and while crossing the forest area we saw an elephant on the side of the road, munching on leaves from a tree.
We decided to spend our night in the watchtower without telling the caretaker. He had warned us of leopards in the jungle too, well that was scary but we decided to give it a try anyways. As fate would have it, on the second night, the elephants came much earlier than expected and the caretaker and his crew were still awake so we couldnt risk going up and staying in the watch tower.
We saw a family of elephants and two tuskers who left early.
We decided to chat for a while before calling it a day. We were travelling back the next day.
Our stay at Abhayaranyam was short but has left a deep impact in our souls. Never ever have we come so close to nature and wildlife. It was a perfect blend of wild India at its best.