We sat at the edge of the forest, on benches, with our books and sunglasses. Every now and then I photographed the way the light fell through the pink bell jars, the direction from where a bird was calling. .
Somewhere between the Western Ghats and the plains of Karnataka’s arid north is Dandeli, in Uttara Kannada district. The big city in the district is Dharwad, where all the brightly-lit shops are, where the major university is, the city to which everyone wants to come.
Dandeli is like any other town. In the late evening, when we arrived here, it was abuzz with people shopping for groceries and window-shopping clothes hung behind glass windows that have turned dusty from passing traffic. It is a town where bus timings are important — if you miss the last one to any of the peripheral villages, you may have to stay back, or hire a very pricey auto. We ended up doing the latter.
Dark and deep
Our destination was Kulgi Nature Camp, a government undertaking within the Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary. The forests are home to a few dozen tigers and other creatures of the night. Once the street lights faded away, the road turned pitch dark, accented now and then by the sharp headlights of the last few vehicles. The trees on either side were thick and looming.
The autorickshaw we were in was rickety, old, and seemed too fragile for the forest. The driver was kind, and accompanied us to the camp to ensure there was someone to meet us, before making his own lonely journey back. Such courtesies are necessitated by the fact that there are no mobile towers here. Our phones would work only two days later, when we left for the big city. Then again, it was this complete lack of network that drew us to the camp in the first place.
All is still
But the night that ensued was as noisy as the morning was going to be. After a rudimentary breakfast and several cups of sweet, sweet tea — there were no better options for miles and miles around — we sat on cement benches made to look like halved logs of wood. We sat, reading, talking... All was still.
It was the beginning of exam season. So we were the only ones on the vast property. An unexpected luxury. We ate what the staff had cooked for themselves. It wasn’t great, but it was local, homely, and not the hybrid touristy cuisine they would have otherwise served — oily butter chicken, potatoes and paneer.
Just after dawn, we missed the Jeep that would have taken us to the tiger safari further ahead. I didn’t mind really, for the voyeurism of a safari is an affair I’ve always found unsavoury.
We walked instead, and collected trash — always so much plastic — along the way to deposit into an empty trash bin. There was a lot of noise from the monkeys. We saw a spotted deer, and imagined we heard a tiger roar at night.
When not flâneuse-ing someplace, the writer can be found with her brood of rescued mutts.
