Today 4/9/22 - started very early at 5am, so barely got 5 hours of sleep. The morning was delightfully cool and the scent of star jasmine was in the breeze. This hotel is right on the main road, so, unfortunately, the peacefulness of the gardens is occasionally rudely interrupted by the real world.
I was going to use yesterday’s mask, but it smelled of yesterday’s dust so decided it was a disposable mask for a reason. I got a quick coffee and was off for the morning safari.
TravelIing the few miles to the park was very nice because it was still cool and it was still pre-dawn soft lighting. The jeeps are such that I am perched a bit higher than the driver, no seatbelt, with my head in the breeze. As we’re driving I’m realizing the highway lane markings are guidelines really. Curious as to our speed I looked down to see that the speedometer didn’t work and the engine light was on. That was the case on yesterday’s vehicle as well. Heaven help me if there’s an accident - I have to remember to duck down if the vehicle rolls so I am below the roll bar. I was later to read in the morning paper that over 200 safari drivers with licenses to drive in this park just lost their licenses due to unsafe driving…
As mentioned, this morning’s route is #1 and the drivers are required to put the route number on their jeeps. We also have to have our passport with us in case of random inspection. Not sure why anyone would want to falsify their identity for access to a game reserve, but you never know.
This is a very pretty part of the reserve. Ive seen many huge Banyan trees - or walking trees as they’re known locally. The big ones are more than 100 years old. I saw a National Geographic special where they talked about local people using the roots for many things, including bridges. There was a mast as we drove into the reserve - I thought it was a communications mast, but it turned out to have a camera on top to monitor people, poaching and animals.
As we drove under tree branches that stretched across the road in an arch I felt leaves coming on me and realized there were black faced monkeys running across the overarching branches above and making a soft “whoop whooping” call. I expected to see more monkeys in the area. They were around, but never as visible as in Africa where they sit on/near the road. That said I saw more later as the temperature warmed up, so maybe it was a timing thing.
I was told a factoid about peacocks: the males grow their long tail feathers during mating season. Another factoid, this time about vultures: Vultures build their nests in high places because part of the process in training their chicks to fly involves dropping them, so if the nest isn’t high enough, well, you understand.…
As we drove, the driver would look at the tracks along the road to determine if/what animals were around and which way to go. There were definite cat prints to see, but we didn’t see any of the actual cats this morning.
We had several “hitchhikers” today. This seemed to be the “done” thing. If reserve rangers needed to get somewhere they just ask for a ride from the “safari” jeeps. I didn’t mind and the people were rather colorful, some sporting large hiking sticks. These rangers would stay for about a week at their posts and count the animals and look for poachers.
The big sitings happened at the beginning of the drive which made the last 2.5 hours boring because we kept driving over the same route 3 times. We did have a good siting of a sloth bear and a pair of brown fish owls. The male got quite upset with us and puffed out his white chest. I had never seen owls in the wild.
We heard alarm calls from the Sambar and spotted deer and stopped to see if a tiger would come through. While stopped we heard the call of a Greater Coucal, or crow pheasant, and got a visit by a rufous treepie - a member of the magpie family. These birds are called “tiger dentists” because they are scavengers and will actually pick food out of the tiger’s teeth. Today they came by and ate from our hands (or hats in my case) while we waited to see what would walk through the forest. It turns out there were no tigers today.
Other fauna seen: white throated kingfisher (we saw this recently in the aviary of the Jacksonville zoo), peacock perched on a branch, spotted deer with faun
Other flora seen: Sausage trees, flame trees
Just before leaving our observation post a very large moth - maybe a hawk moth?-came and sat on my finger.
Although we didn’t see anything, I much preferred the morning drive from a temperature standpoint and was glad to be going back to the hotel as it was already getting very hot at 9:30am. At the hotel I met the rescue elephant and got to feed him some cucumber. I thought his trunk would be smooth, but it was very hard and leathery with scratchy whiskers. I had breakfast upon my return of fruit and a masala dosa.
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