9th Awareness Campaign in Bandipur

As we reached Kekanahalla check post around 11 in the night, we were greeted by a tusker who was happily grazing at the place where we usually park our car (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQJ3tdw5mfE). So we decided to park it opposite to the check post. Rakesh stopped the car and as soon as I got down fellow volunteers started flashing torches at us. It took me seconds to realise that I am standing right next to another elephant. Jumping back to the car we parked it right outside the check post away from the elephants. When we got down and went to the cottage the guard showed us 3 more elephants who were close to our vehicle but we didn't notice them at all. How silent they can be!!!!!

Well we started with our campaign. But our agenda was different this time. We planned to study the night traffic pattern and thanks to our volunteers, we could gather much data which I am listing below:

1. Trucks carrying flowers from Ooty to Banglaore ply at night. They are plucked in the evening and have to be transported over the night to keep the freshness intact.
2. SKS has 2 buses plying every night, one plying from Kerala to Bangalore and other one Bangalore to Kerala.
3. 20 Karnataka Government Buses ply every night: 10 from Bangalore and 10 from other States.
4. 9 Kerala Government Buses ply every night: 5 from Kerala and 4 from Bangalore.
5. 8 Tamil Nadu Government Buses ply every night: 5 from TN and 3 from Bangalore.
6. Thursday and Friday nights experience heavy interstate truck movements carrying Rice, Sugar and Vegetables.
7. Vegetable Trucks on Saturday from Manjari (Kerala) ply towards Hassan travelling in the night to reach morning Sunday market.
8. Trucks squeezed with 1000 of ducks/chickens travel in the night because that causes less stress for the birds and hence less number of deaths.
9. It is tough for the concerned authorities to check these trucks in the night, many travels in the night to avoid payment of Regular Marketing Committee and they can also skip checking of documents in the night.
10. When a road kill of wildlife happens, the guards are generally informed of this by the passing by vehicles. The guard checks the animal and calls the doctor. Postmortem is done and the body is either burned or buried (in case no wood available to burn it). Finally record the road kill in Majjir (we did not get this word; assume some kind of record book). It is very difficult to track the offenders.

Not bad considering one night job!!!!!

At around 2 in the night we spotted a herd of sambars very close to the last cottage. After spending some half an hour they crossed the road and vanished inside the thickets. Well I remembered this is the same place where we saw 4 tigers too!!!! Really Bandipur Rocks!!!! Some spare time in the morning gave us opportunity to do some monkey shooting :-D

Early morning was safari time for us and it was not a very eventful venture. The only first time sighting for me was Common Blue Kingfisher and few un-identified birds. Lastly we spotted a lone wild dog running across the road while on our way to JLR for breakfast.

Followed by a breakfast in JLR we went to check out Bala's guest house which is in the close proximity to Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. And to our surprise his property was visited by a huge male tiger couple of nights back. We checked out the pug mark right adjacent to a small stream. Also saw the Forest Dept's tusker who was in a "musth" stage. Prakash and Vasanth enjoyed a nice horse riding session. We also saw Malabar Pied Hornbill and a Indian Giant Squirrel in the property.