Safari 1
Time: 5pm-7pm
The Safari:
We took the bus to the Nagarhole Tiger Reserve. And found a massive safari bus waiting for us. This was a pre-booked safari but unfortunately they waited for an extra ten people to come, so that everyone was squished up and found it hard not to get in each others way. Luckily the bus had massive windows and elevated everyone’s position which helped a lot when it came to spotting animals. Soon we were out, driving through the jungle. After half an hour we had seen wild boars, monkeys, Indian Bison, more deer than we could count, serpent eagles, kingfishers and much more. A little later we headed down to a lake to see elephants. There were at least twenty huge elephants and some miniature – well, only miniature if you compared them to the adult elephants – baby elephants. It was amazing but when we moved on we didn’t stop, well only once. We stopped beside a group of jeeps in which all the people were looking excitedly into the trees and trying to spot something. Finally, after a lot of asking around, we discovered that there was a leopard in the trees. That was when one of the guides came back and took my binoculars because the guides hadn’t brought their own ones. After a while I got them back and after I looked I handed them around to my family and some other people. Next we continued back on a very bumpy track. I was sitting at the back and at some points I almost flew out the window and at others I almost flew down the aisle. As I said, it was a very, very bumpy ride. I felt like someone had put me in a giant tin can and had gotten a giant to shake it around. Oh, wait, the tin can had windows and there were animals outside it. Soon after, a group of shaken people arrived back at the entry to the national park and quickly escaped the iron beast, to go to the holiday resort… and have dinner. So that was the first safari.
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Indian Bison
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Monkeys
Safari 2
Time: 7am-9am
The Safari:
It was very early morning, but we were already awake. We knocked on Vinod’s door and found out that he wasn’t coming. Dave, Apurv and Riminda weren’t coming either. At least Laura, Adam and Julia were coming. By the way, these are all trainers from Thoughtworks. Anyway, we were finally departing to go to the safari. The second safari was better than the first even though we didn’t see as many animals, this was because the hundreds of deer we saw on the last safari weren’t up yet. The thing was, that everything that was up, was wide awake. Some deer were fighting and even some wild chickens were awake.
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We saw so much. We must have seen all the species from the first safari and more. We saw peacocks and boars, elephants and… a mongoose, and… while we were on the way back we saw a (drum role) leopard! It was so close. Barely 20 metres away. It was in a tree but after a while it climbed off the tree and into plain sight. We were amazed. And even now as I sit here typing and remembering that safari… I remember it as the best.
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Mongoose
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