Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary: The people, and the scenery

I was given a sudden, late-night query: Would I like to visit the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary?

My companions were Apoorva Managoli, her dad Dr Sanjeev Managoli,and Vaibhav Chowdhary…that was like Black Forest with 3 different flavours of ice-cream! No, Sanjeev is not a car-diologist, but it was his new vehicle!

He also had a new toy:

I’m making a separate post about the birds, and the six-footers.

The road passed through beautiful land:

We indulged in some mammal photography, little knowing that our mammal sightings in the evenig were going to be very good!

Temples were being decorated:

The goddess,Kaveri, revealed herself in all her beauty:

The endangered

GRIZZLED GIANT SQUIRREL

was around:

and here’s the large nest:

the majesty of the trees at the JLR campus was staggering:

Apoorva posed with Harish, who was our guide for the Squirrel, the Jungle Owlet, and other delights on the JLR campus:

The forest often gives us gifts to disperse:

Several wild plants and flowers delighted me:

A carpet dotted with red:

Our final destination became Galibore JLR:

The rain clouds lovingly wrapped themselves around the hills:

Rustic living on the banks of a lake looks picturesque, but may not be comfortable!

Houses were decorated beautifully:

Sericulture was in progress:

How can I forget the food? Here’s brefus at Kanakapura:

And here are elevenses:

Gaily decorated vehicles (I don’t know how the drivers could see anything of the road!) were all around:

The balance

When you’re a monkey
Life’s dory and hunky…
You can balance on things
That end in round rings…
It’s a sitting position that’s funky!

Dwitheeya

The second day of the waxing phase (shukla paksha) of the moon is always very difficult to see, but this time, as we were coming back from Bheemeshwari (Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary) last Saturday (the 24th of March), we came to the small village of Muthathi, and found the villagers standing around, pointing at the western sky. When I asked some of them, they took the trouble to explain that this moon, after the Kannada New Year,was considered an auspicious sighting. So I too took aim and sighted the dwitheeya, or the second day of Chandra:

It was quite tough to see the thin sliver at first, but as the sunlight faded from orange to purple to indigo, the beautiful crescent was easier to spot…but not easier to photograph! Here Chandra (this is one of the Indian names which is for both men and women!) is, showing the beauty of our nearest neighbour in space (vyOm), seen through the forest of the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary:

Here is an entry

about the moon, where, about 4 years ago, I’d written:

The moon
Sets so soon
Over my city….
Perhaps she waxes and wanes
From the energy she loses and gains
She looks lovely at the full…
When she draws up tides with her pull…
So thin she looks now……a pity
That she can’t always be a full moon.
But we don’t have the boon
Of making the most of ourselves, and being the best.
We wax and wane, too….sometimes being more, sometimes less.

The Grizzled Giant Squirrel, Bheemeshwari, 240312

The

GRIZZLED GIANT SQUIRREL

is listed as “near-threatened” by IUCN.

We are extremely lucky to have quite a few of these beautiful arboreal animals, about 100km from Bangalore, in the

Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary

and more specifically, at the

Bheemeshwari Fishing Camp of Jungle Lodges and Resorts

Though KM had the squirrel pointed out to him by Bharat and Alim, who run the adventure activities at the resort, while we were having an afternoon nap, I was feeling bad that Poornima, Kannan and the twins, Suhas and Supriya, had never seen them. So I was thrilled when Tanu, who is on the staff at JLR, told me he’s also very interested in these animals, and right at dusk, as we prepared to leave, he called us to see them.

The sun was setting and the light was fading rapidly; and we were, of course, looking directly up into the canopy. But I managed a few shots and videos (and I am sure the others have got much better pictures!).

Here’s the squirrel, looking down at us while “on the munch”:

Here’s the short video I took:

I caught this short bit of the squirrel running and jumping:

Then we were even more delighted…because a baby squirrel came up to be with its mother!

Very happy at having seen this beautiful animal, we left them to their meal in the huge trees of the camp:

We said a “farewell” (literally!) to these two, and made our way home.

Nimishamba Temple, Srirangapatna, 290311

Yesterday, thanks to

Vittal

I went to visit the

Nimishamba temple

in the village of Ganjam, 2 km from Srirangapatna. It was a lovely visit, to a temple peacefully set on the banks of the Kaveri.

As photography inside the main temple is banned, I could click only these deities in the outer “prAkAram”…but look at the beautiful way they have been adorned!

Here’s Ganesha:

and here’s Anjaneya or Hanuman:

More photographs, and a short account, are

here

Here is the gopura of the temple, smiling in the sunshine:

The visit,and the trip to Ranganathittu, were wonderful and could not be blighted by the loss of my mobile phone early in the morning!

The Angling Lesson

When Abhisheka, Adarsh,Anush, Sandeep and I (that’s the way we were taught to make a list of people…”x,y,z, and I”… not, “me and x,y,z “!) went to Galibore, we found one of Sandeep’s friends, an avid angler, called Balaji, getting ready to leave the camp for the Hyra fishing area with his fishing tackle. So we followed him there, and we all got a great first experience of angling….and according to Sandeep, the young men had the luck of the devil, because each time they got a Mahaseer , a famous fish found in the Kaveri, which can be really giant-sized, on their line.

Here’s the Mahaseer, when it was caught and before Sandeep released it:

Hectic few days….

Things have been far more hectic than I want, and I have not spent more than a few hours at home…but there are times when interesting things happen all at once….

Off to Devarayanadurga in a couple of hours, so here’s one of the closing images from a wonderful day at Kanakapura and Galibore….

Agni….the god of Fire, sacred to both the Hindus and the Zoroastrians…Agni is the carrier of all offerings by human beings to the gods…and is the witness to every Hindu marriage.

Lunch

One goes to Kabini, the flagship resort of JLR, and one sees such a wealth of sightings that it leaves one breathless.

However, the fact remains that I was there on “work”..and so had taken the S3 and not KM’s nice 20D or the 300mm lens…and there were times when I sorely missed them both.

But one of the images I really loved was this one….

That’s the common HOUSE SPARROW,er, well, it *used* to be common, and is still to be seen around the outskirts of my city…I love these perky, chirpy birds; watching their behaviour used to while away a lot of my childhood time…

Have been having an extra hectic weekend; want time to ponder over the Golden Chariot experience, but not finding it. But some thoughts…

1. I like having an experience, and then having the time to mull over over and articulate my thoughts and views. I find it difficult to live life at a hectic pace. I love the luxury of time. So then…do I want a job, however enjoyable it may be, when it may mean curtailing of several activities which give me happiness? I also have the incredible luxury of having enough money (or at least the perception of enough money, which is what is better) not to need the job.

2. This trip has been a self-revelation to me. I have always been feeling constantly that I am a beginner still, at both birding/wildlife. But dealing with a busload, a boatload, and then a safari jeepload of tourists has made me realize that I *have* learnt a lot since the days when I wore the “wildlife tourist” shoes myself. I found that I do enjoy addressing a group of strangers, and using a combination of humour and information “Mango tree is Mangifera indica; Silk-cotton tree is Bombax indica; what sort of tree is Tata indica?” ). It was satisfying to be able to identify birds and mammals and talk a little about them. The culture/history part, too, is something I think I can do well. I realize that while self-comparison with more knowledgeable people will keep me learning, I must step back and occasionally and see how I am making steady progress on the road.

3. There is great satisfaction in knowing that my skills have resulted in my being offered a couple of jobs…whether I took/take them up or not. At 53, I did NOT expect that anyone would ever offer me jobs that are interesting and utilize my skills. What a difference from my parents’ generation, which was considered washed-up and ready for the morgue when they entered their fifties.

Oh, well, introspecting out loud, like Mr Hamlet and Mr Othello used to do (but using far easier English!)

Sigh, there are the posts on the Golden Chariot experience, the incredible sightings at Kabini, and the great interactions at the recent batch of the JLR Naturalists’ Training Program that I want to write, the pics to post to Flickr, another couple of articles to write, the QuizFamilies next-quiz details to take care of, and so the list goes….gah, I do NOT like having stuff backlogging like this…there is nothing nice about it, I suffer from piles..work-piles, that is!

Posts and photographs (some of them nice, please excuse the others, they will also be shamelessly posted) soon…

Betrayal comes in all sizes

When you put your trust in somebody, and that someone does not live up to the trust…when you think someone will do a good job, and they smile at you and you find later that the job was done shoddily…evem as small a thing as thinking that someone who promises something will come through, and finding that it doesn’t happen…betrayal of trust, and lack of commitment comes in all sizes, from the very small to the quite large.

As one ages, one tries to take these fall-short situations in one’s stride. First of all, one tells oneself that there must have been situations when one did the same thing..but of course one cannot remember such incidents (does recollection whitewash away the memories where one was at fault?)

Today’s small betrayal…Evam, the theatre group from Chennai, staged a play that was named “And Now For Something Different”..and proceeded to give a rehash of their last Monty Python play. It was hugely enjoyed by the audience…but when I see actors with the talent that Evam has, selling out for hype, mindless slapstick (some of the scenes were repeats of the old sketches) and lucre…it’s sad. But again, I am in a minority here, as Chowdiah had a full house and the play seemed very popular.

But I have seen their first play, “Evam Indrajit”, a translation of a serious, excellent Bengali play…and I feel so bad at the way such great acting talent is now subordinate to, quite literally, playing to the gallery. Must entertainment be mindless, hysterical comedy? Can’t an audience think while being entertained?

Ayn Rand addresses this question in her play, “Night of January 16th”. She makes the point that educative and entertaining, serious and interesting, need not be mutually exclusive. But I suppose an audience on a weekend afternoon, after a hard week’s work, seeks only escapism, and does not want anything else but escapist slapstick…

There is also sadness in knowing that for many people, I am a “foul weather” friend…when things don’t go well, and depression and rough times are reigning, then I am someone to talk to interminably and share the sadness and adversity with…but when fair weather sets in, other interesting alternatives and pursuits appear, I am an ex-friend…..of course, lip service is paid to the friendship, but the shell is all that is left. I wish I had the wisdom to both see it coming each time, and not mind about it.

But the good part of the weekend was a cleanup campaign by Clean and Green, that was sponsored by Oracle…it’s great to see so many people DOING something instead of just complaining and leaving it at that. Will be posting about that to Metroblogs tomorrow; yesterday was a great day in spite of the awful way it began.

And of course, the beauty of the Kaveri, with her rushing waters, her majestic trees, the scudding clouds and the sunshine…no matter how many people try to foul and mar her beauty, she remains still magically lovely.

Mineral Water Is For The Birds

You may have the waters of the Kaveri river right next to you, but it’s cool to have a bottle of mineral water close to hand..er, talon….

Wonder what the bird was really up to!