Antarvedi - a place unexplored

A couple of weeks back, my boss called us for a sudden meeting at his guest house in Antarvedi. Thats when I looked it up on google maps. So Antarvedi is located on the banks of river Godavari in the East Godavari district of Andhra Pardesh. The location is beautiful because it is at this point that Godavari merges into the Indian Ocean.

Antarvedi has a sleepy village setting with all the paddy fields, the coconut leaf huts, the long unending stretches of coconut trees, very cheerful locals and of course the prawn farm landlords (earning crores of Rs).  It has a small but ancient temple with a story of Sage Vashishta associated with it. As I mentioned earlier as the river meets the sea you also have a beautiful, virtually unexplored beach. My boss has a few acres of land right on the banks of Godavari and has build a beautiful guest house over looking it. I had the privilege of staying there for a few days.

So if you do get to this part of Andhra and you are not a local and are wondering as to what you could do, here are a few tips
1) Walk around to get a true village feel. Check out the prawn and fish farms. The locals will be delighted to pull out a fish and show you. See if you can meet any of the prawn crorepati and get a few tips from them.
2) Lot of rare birds around. Take out your SLR and click away.
3) Ofcourse visit the beach. Make sure you do so either in the early mornings or towards the late evening. While you are at it, see if you can spot any dolphins swimming by.  I visited the beach in the morning and was very lucky to spot a few dolphins by just standing right there on the beach
4) Visit the local fish market and buy your share of the best quality prawn either dried or fresh
5) See if you can get yourself invited to any of the locals house. People in this part of Andhra are known to be generous with their guest and make amazing food. I got to relish a couple of crab and fish(chepala pulusu) dishes during my stay and they did taste yummy.
6) If all this is done and you still have time, find a comfortable place, settle down to read or even better write a book. 

Dophin swimming by

Sunset on river Godavari

Sunrise amidst coco palms

I think this is a Racquet Tail

Indian Roller or the Blue Jay

Cute crabs on the beach

Structure in the middle of no where

Fresh catch of the day

Fish from the farm

APTDC also has a resort in this region at a place called Dindi. I think there is another privately run resort just opposite the APTDC resort. Its hard to find any other accommodation here. The best time to  visit is the winters as Andhra as a whole has harsh summers.  The nearest towns are Narsapur and Bhimavaram.

Dandeli - a weekend getaway

A few weeks back I had been to Dandeli. For those who are wondering where Dandeli is, it is the Uttar Kannada district of Karnataka, nestled between the western ghats. Dandeli is almost synonymous with white water rafting in the south of India. The river Kali flowing through the jungles provide enough excitement for any novice rafter. Dandeli is also a bird-watchers paradise. Many species of birds are easily spotted here especially the 3 varieties of the Malabar Hornbill.

Our trip was on a tight budget and so we traveled by bus from Hyderabad until Hubli. Reached Hubli by 8:30 and were lucky to get a bus going to Dandeli from Hubli itself. The frequency of buses to Dandeli from Hubli is less. You can also go to Dharwad and take a bus from there to Hubli. Hubli and Dharwad are well connected with buses plying at regular interval.

Reached Dandeli by 12:00 noon. We had our bookings done at the  State Forest  Dept, Kulgi Nature Camp. These are the most economical, well maintained, and quite beautifully located accommodation you will find in Dandeli. The only disadvantage being that this guest house is located in Ambika nagar which is almost 30km from Ganeshgudi, and Ganeshgudi is the place where all the rafting and water activities happen. If you have a vehicle of your own it should not be a problem.  The resorts on Ganeshgudi are exorbitantly priced, and I feel only the Tree houses of Hornbill deserve those rates, because they are located just by the river on tree. If not for that, its not worth staying in Ganeshgudi.

Nature Camp -  Tents

Log Huts

Kulgi Nature Camp can be booked by calling the Forest Dept at Dy. Conservator of Forests,Wildlife division,
Dandeli, Karnataka, India, Phone - 08284-231585 and Fax: 08284-331585, 08284-232960, 08284-232981 or 9916218630 Kiran Fernandez(an officer in the dept). Once you confirm the availability over phone, send them a DD by fax or courier to confirm your reservation. They are priced at Rs 1000 per day for the tents and Rs 1500 per day for the log huts. Once in Dandeli, visit the Forest Dept office in Dandeli first, pick up your receipt before proceeding to Kulgi.  While you are at the Forest Dept Office, look around the tall trees and you are sure to spot at least one Malabar Pied Hornbill. The Nature camp has both tents and log huts. Both are well furnished with attached bathrooms and midst of forest. I preferred the tents to the log huts. The food served is decent.

That very evening we headed to Ganeshgudi for the rafting. Anyone in Dandeli can arrange a white water rafting for you. We got it done through the Nature Camp guys. The rafting was quite good with a few good rapids that we navigated. All along you will spot different species of birds, so do look out.

Malabar Pied Hornbill

Dandeli is also supposedly one of the few places in India where you can spot the Black Panther. A large birding group who was with us at the Camp supposedly spotted one, on one of their birding trails. We were unlucky though.

A kingfisher

The next early morning we went for the jungle safari. Spotted a few deers and some birds like the kingfisher and a brown flycatcher. Once back at the camp we went on a birding trail which you can take from Kulgi camp. It around 2 km walk through the jungle along a barely defined path. The only bird we spotted was a woodpecker and got bit by leeches all over. In the evening we headed to Syntheri Rocks This is a beautiful place. Surprisingly we were the only ones at the falls and so had nice serene experience.

The camp as such is a nice place to walk around and is surrounded by the jungle. There is a good possibility of spotting something while staying at the camp itself.

Syntheri Rocks

 The next morning we headed out of Dandeli towards Yellapur. Our drive took us to a spot which was a water reservoir or backwaters of some kind. It was a picturesque spot, early in the morning and looked so very peaceful.

The Backwaters I mentioned about :)

So go head and plan that Dandeli trip now :)

A trip to Mowgli's Forest - Pench

Last weekend was a long one I decided not to go to Bangalore. I decided to put the weekend to good use and we planned to go to Pench. Hemanth and priyanka readily agreed and soon we were booking our bus tickets . Called up Dr Ghosh and he readily agreed to get the accommodation and the safari tickets done. With that in place we were all set for Pench.

Pench is one of the few tiger reserves we have in India, located in MP around 200 km from Nagpur. It is also the place that inspired Rudyard Kipling to write the famous Jungle Book. Pench is one of the safe havens for tigers with active forest gourds and a healthy tiger population of around 35 tigers supported by around 3000 animals of the deer family including chital(spotted deers), Sambars and the Neelgai. Tigers here have been able to successfully reproduce in the wild and there are instances of tigresses having multiple litters. Thanks to the forest management here and the supportive villages around. Forest guards patrol the forest armed with just a lathi stick. Not sure how they would tackle a poacher if they ever encounter one.

From Nagpur we hired a taxi which took us straight to our resort. The spirit of Sankranthi was infused in us thanks to the continuous 'Til Gud Laddu and Gud Gud Bole ' over the radio. Not sure what the second part means though. The resort where we had booked was called the S Kumar 999. With such a shady name we had our hopes low. But after reaching the place, it was a pleasant surprise. With beautiful lawns and cute cottages the place had a nice comfy feeling. They also had tent accommodations which we did not dare trying because the nights were quite cold. After a yummy lunch, topped with rassogolla and gulab jamuns we were ready for our first drive into the forest.

In Pench the open jeep safaris are well organized. There is a fixed set of 5 routes and you would be assigned a route on first come basis. On each route they would have around 10 vehicles. So a total of 50 vehicles are allowed into the forest for each trip and 40 of these slots can be booked online at the MP tourism website www.mptourism.com. The rest 10 are on first come first serve basis.

As we entered the forest all of us were quite excited and started looking around. The first to greet us where the spotted deers and the langurs. Each set of spotted deer had a langur accompanying them and the relation between these 2 species is symbiotic. The Langur warns the deers of predators and deers eat of the leaves that the langur drops off the trees. Watching a langur eat is quite interesting. They pluck small stalks from the tree, suck the sap from the stalk and throw the stalk down. These stalks are then eaten by the deers.

Pench is mostly comprised of teak trees. Some portions are completely grassy. These are mostly the areas which once were villages and now turned into the forest reserve. There are other interesting trees like the crocodile bark tree and the ghost tree - this truly looks ghostly.

croc tree

Ghost Tree

We roamed all along our route trying to listen to alarm calls but in vain. We saw more Chitals and langurs and quite a few peacocks. A couple of sambar deers were spotted too. We returned slightly unhappy. Back in the resort, the cold had started to set in and we huddled around a small bon fire set up for us with Hot tea and pakodas. Stories of cruel managers, older trips dominated the conversations.

The next day we had an early morning safari and so woke up by 5:00 am. The forest gates open by 6:30 and its important to be the first vehicle going in because there are higher chances of seeing animals on the path before the rush into the deeper forest troubled by the Gypsys haunting them. Though the morning was freezing cold we reached the gate on time and were the first vehicle to go in. Again we were welcomes by the deers, this time not many langurs around. We drove round and round. Our guide Subhash was very informative. He kept telling us the little nuggets about the forest. We were looking out for alarms calls either by the langurs or the chitals. At one particular stretch, we suddenly heard the langurs become restless and hopping from tree to tree and calling out. the chitals too held their heads up in attention. All of us had a feeling that the tiger would walk in anytime now. But all that remained was silence and no sight of the tiger.

The silence in the forest is kind of a numbing sensation. There are times when it is so silent you don't hear even the birds nor a twig move. It kind of brings about a feeling of self realization or introspection. Its a strange feeling but a nice one for sure. Reminded me of my nephew hindi translation for 'pin drop silence' - 'Sui patak sannata'.

We continued roaming around and came across the beautiful Neelgai. They looked so graceful especially the male in the misty back drop of the forest. It reminded me of Harry potter's Patronas. At one particular stretch we spotted the pug marks of tiger. we followed the marks but it ended at one point. Looked like the tiger went into the forest from that point on. After more futile attempts to spot the tiger we returned to our resort.

After some tasty lunch we geared up for our 3rd trip into the forest. We decided to take the same route as in the morning because we had heard alarms calls and were hopeful that we might spot the tiger then. We roamed the same paths over and over again. It was only the chitals, the langurs , the sambar deers and a far off neelgai and yes a jackal that was merciful to us. The tiger was least interested in knowing who had trespassed its territory.

Pench is also a home of different varieties of birds. we saw owls, racket tailed bird, serpent eagle, jungle babblers, kingfishers, woodpeckers, parrots, vulture and the grey hornbill.

We returned to our resort for another cozy night around our bon fire. After some time Dr Ghosh joined us. We went for a short drive in his car. He gave us a basic SLR tutorial and we tried some shots under his guidance.

The next morning was our last chance and last safari. We again reached the spot first. This time Lallan was our driver and according to Dr Ghosh, he was a guy with good instincts. Lallan lives just outside the Pench gate and owns the Lallan Bhojanalay. So with the Dr and Lallan in our jeep, we were hopeful. We drove around looking for pug marks, alarm calls any possible trace. we went to the spots where there were the alarm calls of a sambar deer the previous night. Played the wait and watch game but the tiger was no where in sight. After some more effort and trying others locations, we came to terms with the fact that we are not going to have a tiger sighting in this trip. We saw tigers pic in the docs camera and consoled ourselves. The rest of the safari was spent is trying different shots.

Soon we were on our way back to Nagpur. We had a few hours in Nagpur before we could board the bus. Roamed around near Lohe Ka Pul. Bought sweets - the famous til gud ka laddu that we had heard so much about. Also went into an interesting Bengali Sweet shop, I think it was called Anand. Heard it was around 100 years old. They had pictures of all famous bengali's starting from Raja Ram Mohan Roy to not sure who the latest was. But was interesting to see photos of JC Bose, Sarat Chandra chatterjee, Bankim chandra chatterjee etc etc. Bought some Nolengud ka Sandesh from there and headed back to Hyd