at the CCD outlet, gundlupet
the road smoothens up and it’s a cruise right up to Theppakadu (mudumalai) through Bandipur. From here there are two paths, going straight leads to Ooty via Gudalur, and turning left from Theppakadu leads again to Ooty through Masinagudi with the much talked about 36 hairpin bends. Unluckily we couldn’t spot anything till Theppakadu because of the pitch darkness or rather due to our lack of knowledge of observing wildlife in the dark. As we turned left from the Theppakadu junction, our first sightings were in the form of two huge gaur bulls (forget 6 pack, they had 12 pack abs) staring right into our faces grazing on the bunds on the sideways of the road. The road on this stretch is narrow compared to the other highway and infested with wildlife as we realized later.
early morning views @ masinagudi
We reached on the scheduled time and checked in by 6am, quickly got ready for the forest trek organized by the hosts with guides. Its such a pleasure that you step out of your backyard and you are right in the forests and you often get to see many wild visitors right in your backyard. So almost all resorts / home stays here organize treks into the forests with the help of local villagers as guides who have this uncanny knowledge of what is what and can blindly take you through the terrain without getting lost in the wild. All five of us were excited for the forest trek and in spite of a sleepless night to our credit, we were all charged up and raring to go. The forest patch was dry and quite bald and we could spot langurs and sambar deer with numerous birds but luck still eluded us as we could not spot the biggies and we lost the trail of the wild elephants that we were trailing. The only solace was at a waterhole inside the jungle where we could spot footprints of many a wild animal which made everybody start guessing which is which!
pug marks found @ the waterhole - during the forest trek
Still, this being our first wild trek, we realized a lot of things of what to wear, what to carry and the most important thing “Silence is golden”. We spent the afternoon making a quick dash to the reserve forest area at Anekatti, which is accessible only with prior permission;
monster lizard at anekatti reserve area
later in the evening we went to Theppakadu hoping to get into the last safari, but as our bad luck continued, there was already a long queue and we had to return back without any safari ride for the day. So we just drove along the Gudalur route and luck started favoring us; we could spot quite a few huge bisons and many peacocks along the way.
peacocks, gaur @ masinagudi; evening view of masinagudi
Dinner at the rest house and then we had the option of driving along again or just retire for the day. Young blood, always wanting more and always willing to take chances and with no fear of roaming the jungles in the night we set out for the night drives with the hope of catching something big and wild. Well wildlife can be spotted all around Masinagudi – on the way to Theppakadu, Gudalur, Bandipur, just about every other road. We were recommended the Moyar road and the Singara road by Joshua, which as we found out was indulged in eerie silence and absolutely cut off from the rest of the world. We took the Singara road first, this roads ends up at a private estate and all along the way is pristine forest, we went ahead driving slowly, our car headlight being the only source of light. We spotted a male tusker having dinner just beside the road; with no mood to confront him in the jungle, we moved ahead till we reached the fringes of the estate, we turned back and passing by the same tusker reached Masinagudi. Now we took the Moyar road, this road leads up to Moyar village that is around 10kms away and we can cover as much distance as we want. 4kms into the road, without spotting anything, we were disappointed and turned around to our way back to the rest house, but the lady luck was reluctant to send us just like that, because the next 5minutes of sighting was all that we were waiting for anxiously from the time we reached Masinagudi. Just on the fringes of Masinagudi as we were inching ahead, we could see something big crossing the road right in front of us. Long tail, hefty body, spots all over, we instantly recognized it was a leopard which we were seeing and in a quick dash it crossed over the road and vanished into the bushes. Those few seconds of wow was all that we required keeping us in high spirits for our entire trip irrespective of what was to unfold the next day. Came back to our resting place in high spirits and were eagerly waiting for the next day's events to unfold.
22nd June 2008: Early morning we had two options, another trek in the forests or safari at mudumalai, we chose the latter as the forest trek the previous day was unfruitful. We could spot herds of deer along with many birds on the entire stretch from Masinagudi to Theppakadu.
deers, hoopee, peahen enroute theppakaadu
@ mudumalai (theppakaadu)
The deer’s cross the road in such a systematic way; two of them stand at either side of the road keeping guard until the herd passes from one end to the other and when they sense any vehicle coming, they back off into the bushes with the herd; surely they have a lesson for us on basic road sense. Being a Sunday, the safari at mudumalai was full with many people coming over, still the sightings were good with herds of deer, elephants, wild dogs, wild boar and many peacocks to see; still the big cats eluded us.
tusker family @ theppakaadu; posing near mudumalai forest office; tusker on roadside,masinagudi roadside tusker encounter @ masinagudi
Even the safari route inside the Mudumalai Park is quite different from the others with dense green forest cover and the jeep track winds through the forest. We started to chug along the path back to our resting place for the much-needed breakfast, some way ahead we found a huge male tusker bringing down branches at the roadside. We stopped and luckily he was very quiet and went about his munching activity even in our presence. We gave him company for almost 15-20 minutes with occasional vehicles stopping and passing by, till a van full of guys came along and started shouting in excitement irritating him. We sensed trouble and moved ahead; later all that we heard was a loud growl from the tusker that made the guys scamper for cover! After the sumptuous breakfast, we went ahead to our next destination Moyar falls on the same stretch of the Moyar road where we had seen the big cat the previous evening. Here permission is required as the viewpoint is in the reserve forest area and wild animals are sighted very frequently here.
@ the reserve moyar falls & group photo @ the hosts place
The place was entirely empty (maybe because of the permission); we sneaked in and had to walk for about 15 minutes till we reached a dead-end; Phew! From there it was a majestic sight of the falls that is in between the woods. Milky white water falling like crystals in between the green cover of the forest area and the surprising thing was that rains were yet to start; still this waterfall was in all glow. We rested there for quite a long time, satisfied our appetites with n number of photographs and left with no mood at all to budge from there. We came back to our nest, bid goodbye to the hosts and started on our way back to home only to realize we were running out of Petrol! Ouch! The nearest bunk was some 30 kms away; we somehow managed to reach there with heavy rains accompanying us and then trudged on our way back to Bangalore taking the same route by which we had come.
Recently read a news article stating Masinagudi area will be declared a buffer zone as it is on the fringes of mudumalai sanctuary; that means less human interference. Well, that’s good news for wildlife but what about the people who are surviving purely on this?
Quick notes:
Distance: Approx 250 kms from Bangalore
Route: Bangalore - Mysore - Gundlupet - Bandipur - Theppakadu (mudumalai) – Masinagudi - Ooty
Accommodation: Plenty of resorts available (info on the net)
Ideal time: All round the year except monsoon season
Food: Mostly included in your resort packages, otherwise smaller hotels available at Masinagudi.
Petrol: No bunks at Masinagudi (Essar bunk is now defunct), nearest is either Gundlupet or Thorappalli.
Tips: Respect nature, maintain silence in the forests, don’t irritate the wild animals, conserve forests and leave no traces of your visit behind.
Wear light colored clothing during treks / safaris, avoid bright colors. Drive slowly when driving through the wildlife zone (from gundlupet up to Gudalur).
care for the nature and the nature cares for you!
females and the solitary male were busy grazing, I stopped close by to them, they saw but could not differentiate between me and the car, they continued their grazing, I took out my equipment, loaded it, aimed at the solitary male, locked the target and then…. Click! Click! Click!
I had shot the Blackbuck; I had shot the Blackbuck… in real sense I had shot him with my camera…
Back to the desk: I had never heard of this place rather I was unaware of this place on the peripherals of Bangalore and where blackbucks are sighted! I too as others was surprised to know this fact that there is a Blackbuck conservation reserve near Tumkur, known as Jayamangali Blackbuck Conservation Reserve or Maidenahalli Blackbuck reserve that comes from the name of the village where it is located. This reserve is located 23kms to the north east of Madhugiri town and about 20kms to the west of Hindupur town. It’s a 798-acre patch of grassland with the largest population of Blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra) in Karnataka apart from the Ranibennur Blackbuck Sanctuary (another surprise). Laudable here are the efforts of the Tumkur based Wildlife Aware Nature Club who have worked hard in getting the protected area status to the reserve.
With the place of visit decided, the next big thing was to find the route to this place, initially this was not easy but our task was made simpler from a lot of help from the net, in particular this site of Ameen , who is a member of the WANC and directions to the place are given in detail.So with everything in place and directions in hand, on 26th July 08, we left Bangalore by 6am and reached the reserve area by 8am with the help of our listed directions as well guidance from the villagers. The roads were in good
condition with bad patches here and there and the catch is you are too sure to miss the deviation to be taken if speeding on these good roads. We were lucky enough just to stop at the point of deviation and ask a local villager who ever happily told “etlaage hogi balakke” (go to the right). As we approached the gate of the reserve expecting forest guards but were surprised not finding anybody to welcome us, we went inside and hardly few meters ahead we saw a male blackbuck on the right happily grazing, he gave us a quiver
look and then not finding us dangerous enough continued his grazing and slowly moved out of our sights. Blackbucks are very shy animals, they run away at the very sight of humans, but they cant differentiate humans sitting in a car, as we knew this we didn’t step out of the car and neither the blackbucks ran in spite of seeing the car. In a span of 15-20 minutes we had sighted around four blackbuck males in addition to a large herd of female blackbucks. We stalked them very slowly and stealthily, in order not to disturb them and make them fleece but 
also kept jostling inside the car to get some good sightings and snaps. The roads inside the reserve are mud roads and with stones popping all over, driving in small cars need to be with care so as not to get some hard hitting underneath. Somewhere on to our right we could sense something happening and our instincts made us step out of the car and enter the grasslands. There were blackbucks, which upon sighting our movements moved deeper inside, we stealthily followed them camouflaging ourselves between the shrubs until we reached a rocky plateau at a considerable height from where the valley could be seen as far as our eyesight could manage. Suddenly we could see from the height a huge herd of blackbucks running across with some 2-3 small predators chasing the herd. No sooner we realized the animals were not predators but dogs that were chasing the blackbucks! We were shocked to see dogs chasing but still got to see some acrobatic and scintillating jumps from the blackbuck herd that were being chased, but neither our reflexes nor our movements were so fast to capture those amazing moments which you don’t often get to see when in the wild. We got back and 
went ahead on the defined path till we reached the end point where electric fence was put up for demarcation. We turned around, came back and stopped for a while at the watchtower and whaled some time gazing at the grasslands and posing for our routine photography. We took another of the routes which ran deep inside the reserve, we just kept going on uphill, downhill, mud slashing, on the rocks virtually however we could manage, the blackbucks were still reluctant to see us go, so we got another good sighting of a solitary male probably from the nearest possible distance – they look beautiful, the dark body color, the tweak
ed horns all combine to give them a beautiful outlook. We continued onto this path and went on and on and finally landed up on a tarred road leading to a village! Traversed on this path to Madhugiri and after a light lunch from there back to Bangalore. So there ended our destined meeting with the blackbucks and left us convinced and happy that in spite of such rapid urbanization all over, there is space for wildlife to co-exist.
Time duration: about 3 hrs traveling on the right path.
Route: there are quite a few routes but mentioned below is the route we took
Nelamangala – Kyatasandra tollgate – Sira bypass road – Koratagere - Madhugiri – Puruvara village – Giregoudanahalli – Maidenahalli reserve.
½ a km after giregoudanahalli, an unmetalled track turns right which needs to be taken to reach the reserve gate.
Food: Carry food and water, madhugiri is the nearest place for these.
Camping: Possible with prior permission from the forest department.Caution: Don’t litter the clean place; leave no traces of your visit.
care for the nature and the nature cares for you!
