My My Mighty!

Remember my jungle lodges trip post?? Our trip to K Gudi? Remember? Ah good good.. this is in continuation of that post.. You have to read this I don't care. Anyway the first day, as I had mentioned in this post, we went on a Jungle safari. We settled ourselves in a jeep, open jeep mind you, and took time to get used to another bumpy ride. Its jungle for Pete's sake and what did you expect? F1 track? You guys are so not wild I tell you ;) So we set off.. we were all excited obviously, standing and balancing ourselves throughout the ride.. Well, initially we saw a bunch of Spotted Deer.. again some three or four of them.. then some more deer and then an occasional Sambar.. more deer.. we were losing patience. Then our driver took a turn, away from the others who had left along with us. After driving for 3 or 4 minutes, we saw a Scorpio parked in the middle of the track with a man standing out of the car, with a tripod and on it was a super duper camera.. we were very impressed (ahem ;)) The guy was rather sweet and gave us a chance to look through the lens. We saw an Owl that he and his friends had found. The Owl was auburn with bright yellow eyes. I loved him. The Owl silly, what did you think? Anyway we had to move coz the Scorpio guys moved ;( we followed them, now hoping to find something interesting, but alas they took a different route, leaving us alone boo hoo ;). Our driver had super sharp eyes and found a herd of elephants! Yeah yeah I hear you say -"Come on even we can a spot an elephant".. But wait there was a Tusker with the rest of them. We clicked pictures, talked in hushed voices (coz elephants don't like to be disturbed you see) and someone popped a question "sir, Tusker yaavaagaadru attack maaDidyaa?" (has the tusker attacked anyone before?) The man replied a cool "Yeah" . We were at loss for words.. more pictures and hushed voices followed.. Those elephants were chilling out. Taking their own sweet time- eating grass, shrubs and walking slowly, I mean completely at home.. Our driver, through his walky-talky told someone that he has found a Tusker and so asked that someone to come to that spot. Apparently it had been 15 days since they had seen a Tusker. So we were a little proud of ourselves to have found him hehe.. We moved closer to the herd.. They did not notice us.. They ate.. looked at nothing in particular.. We were waiting for them to move. We were bored of watching them gaze. But we didn't see one thing coming though. A sight that is unforgettable. The Tusker pushed a whole damn tree right in front of us. Just a light push and voila! the tree was on the ground.. We were awed at its strength .. And the only thing we regretted later was that we couldn't take a video of this whole tusker-making-the-tree-fall episode.. I guess I'll crib all my life. It pushed the tree and started walking forward. Chased a Deer which I guess had just popped in to eat some grass.. We went forward as he did and just watched him.. But this tusker made a lasting impression on me and ever since this trip, I have read a lot about tuskers'. Poor things are getting killed these days.. either because of their violent nature or because they get electrocuted while straying too close to an area where human beings live.
Hmm so that was my safari story. nothing great.. Not too adventurous,,.. We hoped to find leopards etc but did not.. Though this Tusker was as good as any other wild animal. Isn't he cute? (picture below).