Kabini Kahaani

“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” 
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

It was a Tuesday morning around 6.30 am; I was in Mysore satellite bus stand enquiring the bus to Nagarahole. The bus had already gone and I had no choice other than traveling to Mysore. By the time I reached Mysore it was 9.30 and came to know that the direct bus to Nagarahole had just left the bus stand. I was advised to go to Hunsur which would be a junction for lot of buses from different places and quite close to Nagarahole as well. With no second thought, I boarded a bus plying to Madikeri with a hope of getting bus at Hunsur. It was an anxious journey till hunsur and I got down at the bus stand to know the fact that the Nagarahole bus had left the Hunsur bus stand just 5 minutes back and the next bus was at 1.45pm. Cursing my stars for what had happened from the sunrise, I simply sat at a place with all the negative thoughts running in my mind. Nothing has worked till now and it is the luck which matters most in any forest drive. Blaming my intuition for planning this expedition on such an unlucky day, I started walking to the highway in an anticipation of finding a vehicle to Nagarahole.  There was a cab parked quite close to the bus stand and the driver was busy speaking to someone over his phone. After a while, I spoke to him explaining him the agonies that I had from the morning. He then called someone and told me to wait in the same place for few minutes. Promptly, a Mahindra vehicle came and stopped in front of me. The driver opened the door and said “Banni Sir hogona”. Without enquiring him anything I stepped in and we were on the HD Kote road within few minutes. We stopped in a hotel for a Tea break since I did not have anything from the morning. The driver was very candid and courteous. By 12.15pm I was in Jungle lodges Kabini.

I was welcomed by Mr. Vijay, a naturalist who explained me the itinerary for the next 24 hrs. There was a kind of positive feel even though I had a horrible time till I reached Kabini. I went to my tent and I was taken aback with the kind of interiors it had and the view of kabini backwaters was so pleasant which took away all my tiredness. After having a sumptuous lunch, I was ready for my first safari. I did not know that Kabini had safari zones where all the vehicles will get distributed. I was assigned B zone accompanied by naturalists Shivanand and Vijay. After getting the permit, I took few shots around to make sure my settings match the feel of the surrounding atmosphere. We went to the old Mysore-Manandavady road and for the first time I heard a Sambar deer giving out a warning call. We stopped for few minutes to check if there was movement of any predator. Just when we entered the Power lane, our driver stopped the vehicle and our naturalist shivanand shouted “Leopard…. Leopard…” I was so excited to get a glimpse and they were looking at a tree very far off, somewhere more than 400m away from us. Vijay made me see its tail hanging down and with that I was able to perceive that it was a leopard. It was very far and my 300mm was not able to get him with good sharpness. When we went close to him, he jumped off from the tree and I thought he went inside the bushes and would never come out. 

But to our surprise, he was hiding in the bushes looking at us with his marble eyes. 300mm was so sufficient which got me tack sharp shots of him. My hands were literally shivering after seeing him so close. It was a young male leopard with glittering eyes and was so agile. 

After few seconds he went inside and climbed up a tree again and we could see him through the bushes doing the circus. He jumped off from that as well and vanished in no time. 

I saw my camera’s Lcd screen some hundred times to make sure and realize that I saw a leopard and I have clicked images of him. The relief after this sighting was inexplicable. We went to back water area later and saw more than 30 elephants around and we were back in the jungle lodges by around 6.30 pm.

Scanning all the pictures I had taken, I was walking to my tent. There were two men standing outside their tent next to mine, one with a cigarette in his hand and the other person with a cup of tea. A naturalist from the vehicle of a different zone had told me that, they just had a glimpse of a tiger. I was under the impression that, these people would have seen the tiger since they were in the other zone. They greeted me and asked what I saw in the wild. Very casually I told them, I saw a leopard. They were so surprised and asked me for the photographs. They saw all the images I had clicked and they were amazed that with minimum equipment, I was able to capture so many actions in the jungle. The person with the cigarette introduced himself as Shaji mohammed from Dubai and he asked me if I knew Hari Menon. “Hari Menon”, Travel photographer! Yes, I have seen his beautiful photographs in his facebook page. Shaji mohammed smiled, looked at the other person and told me that, this is Hari Menon. I was taken aback and could not believe my own eyes that I was speaking to one of the finest photographers. Hari menon checked all my images and explained me the importance of composition and this is where I learnt “Photography is about composing and not just clicking”. 

I was given lot of tips from both of them and they felt so happy learning that, I had come alone all the way from Bangalore just for the love of photography. I was the youngest person in Kabini that day with minimum equipments and ours was the only vehicle to get the images of a predator. This is the day which taught me so many things on photography, its ethics and if I had dropped this tour, probably my thoughts on photography would have been completely different. Even though I had a horrible time in the morning traveling to kabini, it was very knowledgeable and satisfying first safari and the gamble I played, paid off.