Elephant country

Hugh and Colleen Gantzer visit the Kabini River Lodge, a perfect getaway for nature
lovers. Once the hunting lodge of the erstwhile Maharaja of Mysore, today it is rated
among the top wildlife resorts in the world

THE wild elephant stood half-concealed in a bamboo thicket. We wouldn’t have seen him if he hadn’t been flapping his ears, slowly, cooling himself. He heard the buzz of our cameras and began to amble towards us. "Should we move on?" we asked our naturalist nervously. He shook his head. "He’s an old friend. Once he discovers who we are, he’ll go back" The elephant lumbered up, larger and very much heavier than our jeep. Fallen branches cracked under his tread, his dark grey bulk filled our viewfinders, a faint aroma reminiscent of a whiskey distillery wafted to us.

We sat very still.

The elephant’s tiny eyes regarded us, and then, very slowly, he raised his trunk, stretched it into the jeep and, with the delicacy of a perfumer savouring a new scent, he smelt us individually. Our fragrances must have been just right because, after a close olfactory inspection he withdrew his sensitive nose, turned, and lumbered back into his bamboo thicket.

Such experiences are part of the daily fare of those who live in Kabini River Lodge.

When the princely domain of Mysore became the state of Karnataka, the Forest Department took over the 571 sq km of the moist and dry deciduous forests of Nagarhole. It also inherited the Maharaja’s tiled hunting lodge and its extensive grounds, built independent cottages in keeping with its colonial style, and set up its eco-tourism operation: Jungle Lodges and Resorts (JLR) Karapur, 80 km from Mysore. It is internationally recognised, today, as one of the world’s best wildlife getaways.

Much of the global mystique of the Kabini River Lodge has been built up by its iconic figure: the legendary Col John ‘Papa’ Wakefield. John, who is in his nineties, has slowed down a bit, but he knows the jungle and its creatures the way you know your closest friends. On one occasion he showed us a female python sitting coiled in the hollow stump of a tree, incubating her eggs. On another unforgettable round through the forest, he predicted exactly what a baby elephant would do in its mock charge at us till its mother disciplined it and herded it away!

The day in Kabini starts with the morning jeep safari, before sunrise. The jeeps are open four-wheel drive vehicles. Every jeep has its own radio hook-up and naturalist in attendance. On our first trip, a little after we left Kabini, and drove onto the main road leading to the gate of the Nagarhole National Park, the naturalist stopped our jeep. There, just off the highway and at the edge of the jungle, he pointed out a family of elephants, a group of gaur, which is what we call our Indian bison, a lone barking deer and many herds of chital or spotted deer.

On another occasion, just after the monsoon rains had filled the Kabini reservoir, we paddled out in a coracle or circular-basket boat, through a forest of bare, flooded, trees. Here, we entered a colony of squawking, grating, cawing, cheeping, diving, flying, water birds, busy feeding their broods of hungry chicks. We spotted large egrets, white-necked storks, cormorants like creatures from a gothic horror tale, and graceful brown-headed fishing eagles.

After the morning round, there’s buffet breakfast in the thatched and open-sided Gol Ghar with much exchanging of tales with other visitors. This could go on till lunch. The evening round starts early, and if you reach the wetlands of the lake shore you may see herds of elephant, bison and deer along with snorting, rooting, families of wild pig with their scurrying, striped, piglets.

As the sun lowers in the sky, and the shadows rise out of the valleys and thicken under the trees, the headlights of your jeep will catch eyes shining in the darkness. Very likely it is a wildcat or a jackal, but it could be a tiger. On one memorable occasion, when dusk still inflamed the sky, a ‘grey’ tiger bounded across the road, in front of our jeep, and vanished into the jungle. The undergrowth on both sides of the road had been burnt to prevent the spread of forest fires. The tiger had probably rolled in the ash just before he heard our jeep.

It certainly gave us an excellent dinner story because dinner is an occasion of great conviviality.

Everyone assembles near the Gol Ghar. Out of the darkness beyond, you can hear the yap of a frightened barking deer, sensing the approach of a leopard. But here, in the circle of warmth and friendship, you’ll experience that special sort of camaraderie that all humans embrace when they get together at night around a blazing campfire, in the living heart of the great wilderness of Kabini.

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