One fine day, my Office decided it was time for some more people-oriented policies so we were all whisked off to some small, out-of-the-way, 5-hour drive to reach place called Nagarhole. Also known as Rajiv Gandhi National Park, it's a wildlife reserve where we expected to see tigers in chase of their prey and other such sexy things.
Now, being an office Trip, I had already imagined it to be not so fun, and was all set to behave all proper and not-excited-unlike-my-usual trip self. Already some of my friends at office had ditched the 'party' imagining it to be super boring and I was beginning to dread the day. And initially, my grim predictions were bang on. The journey to Nagarhole was long and painful, the seats hard, we stopped to eat at some South Indian vegetarian joint and the scenery was not pretty at all.
Sigh.
Once we finally reached our resort, I actually contemplated just staying back and sleeping the rest of the day away, while everyone got on another bus to go into the jungle. And even though I dragged myself and went, the safari was not even remotely thrilling. Given there are only 82 tigers in the whole damn reserve and some 90 odd leopards, chances of actually spotting one was less than 1% despite the guide’s frantic suggestions to the contrary. And of course the deer and the bison populations were exploding in our faces, but that’s a different and irrelevant story. A few takeaways from the safari, as I zoned out and mentally started writing this post:
- The greens & the browns are forever etched in my memory, coz that’s literally the only thing that we saw
- I am as ready as can be to recognize and properly catalogue all kinds of deer species from a mile away
- I have discovered that elephant spotting is a thing for everyone in my office, and anyone who able to do so was looked upon with shining adoring eyes of the junta. And this is insane coz we see anyway them ambling around on the roads of Bangalore – the elephants, not the elephant- spotters.
- And lastly... errr, no just 3 points.
But then the most amazing thing happened - it began to Rain. Right there, in the middle of that god-forsaken forest with hardly any animal / bird sounds and just a small tin contraption of a bus separating us from the "wild", it started to rain.
And the world around me changed. Suddenly everything became beautiful, the air cooled down to the point of freezing, the dull, dead green turned fresh & pulsating, I could hear bird song and as I stuck my head out of the window (risking my neck from possible imagined-tiger attack) I felt the wind in my hair and the rain drops on my face and everything was all right. The trees were so dense that it became dark at just 5 pm and it felt like we were ancient explorers trudging through a dangerous and unknown forest to ultimately reach the famed and mysterious El Dorado. We spotted a few gorgeous lakes (ponds?) and the rain water dancing on their surface was the stuff that poetry is all about. The dirt path we were driving on became a mini river, the animals reacted gracefully to the water, I could smell the sandalwood, I abandoned my camera and gave into nature, the feeling of it, the connection with it and it finally became a trip worth coming all the way for.
We got back to our resort for a true party in the wild, a jungle mein mangal if you may and that, in addition to the awesome new girl gang I formed ended the day on a happy high. We drank, danced around a bonfire, sang along with the DJ, bitched about everyone, picked up office gossip and the kicker, actually didn’t want the weekend to end…
