Touring to Bandipur: The dos, don’ts, hows and how-nots

 

‘What’ is Bandipur?

Looking for a budget tour in India? Make it Bandipur! Bandipur National Park (BNP) or Bandipur Tiger Reserve in Karnataka is where the big cats and elephants vie with each other for a ranking! That is, BNP is the second highly populated National Park in terms of tigers whereas it is the largest habitat of wild elephants in South Asia.

What was once Venugopala Wildlife Park (established under Govt. Notification dated 19th February 1941) was enlarged in 1985 extending over an area of 874.20 Sq.Km and renamed as Bandipur National Park.  However the reserve was brought under Project Tiger in 1973 itself for good. The result is for all to see today!

Skirting BNP on its borders are three equally famed National Parks-  Nagaraholey National Park ( Naa-ga-ra + holey, ‘ey’ like in they. Holey means a tributary or a large stream.  I mean, it’s not the ‘hole’, well known as such but misleading) in Karnataka, Wayanad National Park in Kerala and Madumalai National Park in Tamil Nadu, now placed on the world map thanks to ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ the first Indian documentary to win an Oscar, focusing on Bomman & Bellie, a couple who dedicated their life to bringing up an orphaned and injured baby elephant in the said Tiger Reserve.  

A part of the Nilagiri Biosphere, BNP is home to tigers, Indian elephants, leopards, dholes, sambars (a deer having three pointed antlers), sloth bears, chital (spotted/axis deer), gaurs, Indian rock pythons, jackals, muggers, and four-horned antelopes and many more species of flora and fauna. It’s also the homeland of endangered Asiatic wild elephants and the rare flying lizard (mistakenly referred as flying chameleon that’s central to the- all- time Kannada classic novel ‘Karvalo’, a magnum opus by the iconic writer-cum- nature lover Late Poorna Chandra Tejasvi). BNP abounds with a wide variety of trees such as teak, rosewood, sandalwood, Indian-laurel, Indian Kino tree, giant clumping bamboo etc.

   How to reach Bandipur?

We left for Mysore from Bangalore in the early morning on 30^th October 2021, following the day tragedy struck the entire Sandalwood, Karnataka and the Indian film industry due to the sudden demise of Kannada super star Puneet Rajkumar. So we were not in a frame of mind to enjoy a tour and neither could we afford to cancel the booking of the cottages at BNP. Yet we took the risk.

  We reached Mysore in the afternoon by KSRTC Airavata. From Mysore we boarded an Udakamandalam (Ooty) bound bus, must be a private one. By the time we alighted near the welcome arch of Bandipur Tiger Reserve, it was almost lunch time.

On finishing the formalities at the reception and dumping our baggage at ‘Vanasiri’, the cottage, gulping down the lunch, and freshening up; we rushed to the Highway to try our luck in catching any bus that would pass via the boarding point of Safari, hoping to reach there well in time. Lady luck smiled. But little we did know that she wouldn’t repeat it during the safari and that’s another matter.            

  However our safaris proved a flop show. All that we could spot anything breath-taking was a herd of elephants, just a glimpse of it. It was too short a time to take a video of those elephants that vanished in the woods in the blink of an eye! Though we went for safari twice all that we could catch was herd of deer, peacocks etc.

     Yet there’s a saving grace. It’s not too often that you roam around in a jungle that’s home to tigers and elephants.  As you wander, you are reliving the royal escapades of Mysore Maharajas this forest witnessed many a time in the yore. If you are a writer or a poet, the woods keep conjuring up images of wild tuskers, big cats, leopards, birds, reptiles all in unison and you feel like heading back in time towards the eons your ancestors went through. It’s a brush with pristine nature that triggers fresh thoughts and ideas.  The moment of epiphany may bless you with the muses and verses you may cherish lifelong.  

As suggested by the staff at BNP, after checking out from the cottage following a night’s stay, we went to the safari point by bus, left our baggage there and headed towards Gundlupet so as to visit Himavath Gopalaswamy Temple atop a hill that falls in the Tiger Reserve itself. Though the temple visit was not on our cards, it proved a welcome break!  Divinity apart, the sight of centuries old heritage temple, the panoramic view of the sprawling forest below are all worth the trouble of waiting for the KSRTC bus in queue at the bottom of the hill. Yes KSRTC because no other vehicle is allowed to enter the route uphill coming under the forest area.

Having spent the time so fruitfully and spiritually, that would have been wasted in case we had decided to wait then and there at the safari boarding point, we returned to the spot in a rick–refurbished-as-mini-taxi from Gundlupet. Yet luck betrayed us again. Once again we had to put up with sighting animals neither as wild nor as rare!  It was as if the wild had ganged up to give us a miss in retaliation for the humankind’s usurping of their land and now treating them as showpieces at our mercy!

Shopping for some souvenirs, we wound up our tour. We left for Mysore by sunset and by the time we reached Bangalore it was around ten in the night.     

So my advice to the wanderlusts is: Yes! Bandipur is a nice place to visit. Yet, it is not just Bandipur and Bandipur only. Make it a mix of Bandipur, Himavath Goplaswamy Temple and maybe a few places in Mysore. Include Bandipur in your tour plan of Mysore otherwise be ready to swallow the disappointment of staring at the woods during a safari and returning, memory-wise, empty handed.     

 Think before you leap!

Bandipur is a forest area. Well, you already know that. (You get all the info from google.)  And that’s why you chose it as your getaway. Perhaps you haven’t heard me right! Listen, it’s indeed a forest area. Period!

When I repeatedly say ‘it’s a forest area’ I mean to say that before you opt out to stay in the budget cottages  keep in mind the following tidbits.

Ø At Bandipur proper, you can’t book an Ola or an Uber, nor hitchhike a rickshaw or a cab whatever.   

Ø In and around the government cottages ( the economy cottages, reasonably priced ones in the sense it is good value for money) of Bandipur  you cannot find shops selling mineral water bottles, soft drinks (and drinks), snacks, biscuits, tea-coffee vending stalls on the road-side.  This holds true for the place where you find Budget Cottages at the Bandipur Reserve which is a few kms    away from the actual scene of action, that’s your boarding point for a safari.

(At Bandipur, perhaps, no one wants to run the risk of swapping one’s life for a mere living! Who knows, the very seller of eatables road-side may literally end up in the guts of a hungry tiger or a bear!)  

Ø Again, remember Bandipur is not Bengaluru Bannerghatta Biological Park-BBBP (in Bangalore). Unlike in Bannerghatta Zoo, it’s not a place where you can offset the disappointment of missing wildlife spotting during a safari with what you watch later at the zoo. There’s no zoo at Bandipur. Period!  To watch the wild life, you are left with no option other than a safari. 

A safari at Bandipur, like any safari for that matter, is gambling by a good name. Get real. For every safari you enjoyed watching in You Tube, there are hundreds of safaris wherein tree is all that one spots! Safari can also mean tigers, leopards and tuskers that enjoy playing hide and seek with the hapless safari-riders. The wildest ones hiding most of the times, you end up taking snaps of just peacocks, spotted deer and wild pigs.

It’s a place where you can hope to indulge in an adventure sport in a true sense of the word. Scope for you to lose yourself is plenty, in the grass if not in the woods. You might get caught amidst the wild pigs (Indian variety, what else?) that would sometimes chase you away! And the spotted deer grazing under the canopy of trees home to restless and ever scurrying langurs mimicking party hopping mass leaders! You are almost cautioned against a herd of wild tuskers, boars and sloth bears, if not tigers, lurking in the dark!

        

Here are a few words of caution and pieces of advice as well.

Don’ts

If you own no vehicle or are wary of driving long hours, and hence prefer reaching the cottages by means of a bus or a cab etc better avoid the budget cottages owned by the Government of Karnataka. Surprisingly and sadly enough, the Department of Forest has made no arrangements to ferry the tourists staying in the cottages to and from safari pick up area. This fact is not mentioned in their website either.

If you are staying at the budget cottages, you are at the mercy of State owned (both Karnataka & Tamil Nadu) buses or local private vehicles if you want to make it to the safari pick up area in time. Missing to catch a bus in advance before the safari timings may prove too costly.  Remember, opting for one more safari would mean extending your stay by one more day that’s quite expensive. I repeat, you can’t catch a rick, book Ola/Uber etc from the cottage site. Now you know why I said local private vehicles.  The staff may help you in booking a cab from Gundlupete, the nearest town, but that would cost you a moon.

Otherwise it’s a nice experience. The cottage rooms are worth the tariff. The greenery abounding all around, wavy snowy clouds garlanding the misty hills (of Ooty, probably) in the backyard, the herds of spotted deer first you wow at on finding them scattered here and there so near to you (and then ignoring them on realizing that in Bandipur their presence is as common as that of stray dogs in your city)… the invigorating aroma of the tea made by the omnipresent Malayali cook (who else?). There are indeed more memories to cherish.